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In this paper, I develop a structural explanation for why 1.5 and second generation Asian Americans have higher academic achievement than white Americans in the United States. In the American job mobility structure, there are two pathways to upward mobility: (1) developing interpersonal skills (socializing) to obtain managerial occupations and (2) developing technical skills (studying) to obtain technical occupations. Asian immigrant parents find that the former pathway is inaccessible because they experience structural disadvantages in the white American social environment due to their foreign cultural background and non-native English skills. Meanwhile, they find the latter pathway accessible because they experience positive treatment and insignificant disadvantages in the white American academic environment (especially in the STEM fields). To maximize their children's likelihood of obtaining upward mobility, Asian immigrant parents encourage their children to develop technical skills and discourage them from developing interpersonal skills. Consequently, 1.5 and 2nd generation Asian Americans have higher academic achievements but lower likelihood to obtain uppermanagerial occupations than white Americans. This paper suggests that to eliminate the Asianwhite academic achievement gap, we should create "culture-neutral environments" in the uppermiddle class education and work institutions in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I evaluate the role of several mechanisms that may mediate the connection between children's health during infancy and their educational achievement. Researchers have begun to pay more attention to the possibility that the relationship between health and socioeconomic status is bidirectional. While poor health has often been studied as a consequence of childhood and/or family socioeconomic conditions, it is also clear that illness and poor health during childhood have lasting socioeconomic effects. What is less clear is why poor health during childhood may influence educational outcomes in late childhood/young adulthood. Do children who are born with a health disadvantage exhibit lower academic achievement, for example, because they experience more health problems, exhibit slower cognitive development, or suffer from reduced expectations for their future, both from themselves and from their families? Understanding how unhealthy children may end up disadvantaged educationally is an important next step. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) Children and Young Adult files, I examine these questions. In the end, the paper seeks to understand the role of childhood health in creating and maintaining educational disparities among older children and young adults. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the multiple identities of high achieving black students. While research has shown that identity formation is related to academic engagement and school success, the scholarly community needs a more informed understanding of how academically successful black adolescents embrace and negotiate multiple identities in their pursuit of academic success. This is important because recent explanations regarding the achievement gap between black and white students has centered around cultural explanations, and assert that black students-even those who live and attend schools in middle class and affluent settings-do not value, and are disengaged from schooling. Such explanations have created a maelstrom by asserting that black culture (particularly African American culture) plays a major role in the achievement gap. We believe that other factors might be at play in social and academic identity because the students highlighted in this paper were achieving academically, while maintaining their racial identity and black culture. Using ethnographic interview data, key finding revealed that these students successfully balanced multiple identities, while simultaneously achieving academically in school. The paper highlights the need for further investigations of academically successful black students across social class and ethnicity, particularly in black communities in the U.S. South. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two objectives. The first objective is to analyze race, class, and gender differences in high school course-taking and achievement among 1996-97 Florida public high school graduates by playing students in high school educational pathways based on their mathematics and science courses taken and achievement in these course. We then supplement this analysis by determining the extent to which race, class, and gender differences in course-taking and achievement both contributed to patterns of educational achievement in high school. This paper is the first part of a larger set of analyses that examine the structural and individual influences on high school educational pathways in relation to the likelihood of students pursuing science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) college majors and careers after high school. Given educational opportunities provided in high schools embedded in specific local school districts and communities, students, presumably with input from school guidance counselors and parents, must decide how far to proceed in available mathematics and science sequences. This paper describes race, class, and gender patterns of educational pathways of individual students and finds that Asian students take more difficult courses and have higher achievement than white students. Both groups have more advanced course-taking and achievement than black and Hispanic students. Students on free lunch do not perform on the level of students who are not on free lunch. Females have high achievement than males and are more likely to take Algebra II and Chemistry, but are less likely than males to take Calculus and Physics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of familial characteristics on youth achievement has been of great interest since the Coleman Report. In recent years, racial differences in educational performance has been the subject of legislation. In this paper, I use a family-centered model to explore the impact of multiple social contexts on the achievement of black and white youth. I consider both the direct and indirect effect of family sociodemographic and interpersonal process characteristics on youth math test score and grade point average. The paper also explores if the effect of family sociodemographic characteristics are partially or wholly mediated through neighborhood, school and peer characteristics. I also consider if the impact of these characteristics differ for white and black youth. Using longitudinal data from Prince George's County, Maryland, a middle class area outside of Washington, DC, I find support for the family-centered model. The results also suggests that although the family-centered model explains the educational performance of white and black youth, the mechanism through which family characteristics are mediated and susceptibility to different social contexts vary for black and white youth. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contributes to the debates about the role of what John Ogbu proposed as an oppositional cultural framework and race gaps in achievement among adolescents. The first part summarizes Ogbu's scholarship about Oppositional Cultural Framework, the opportunity structure, and African American student achievement. It then summarizes Mickelson's earlier work and locates it in relation to Ogbu's earlier studies. The second part of the paper presents findings from my empirical investigation of adolescents' abstract, concrete, and oppositional attitudes toward achievement, and the extent to which these attitudes predict achievement. Oppositional attitudes are measured by beliefs that academic achievement compromises a students' ethnic authenticity. I found that, as Ogbu predicted, the stronger a student's oppositional attitudes, the lower the achievement. While expected social class and gender differences appear, I found significant race differences only among 8th graders and none among 12th graders. Third, I discuss the meaning and significance of the findings for understanding the persistent underperformance of minority youth in the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the findings from my Determinants of School Success study-a qualitative comparative analysis of six elementary schools in low-income, immigrant neighborhoods in Vancouver, Canada. Despite having similar neighborhood profiles in terms of socio-economic factors, three of these elementary schools have high standardized test score achievement in literacy and numeracy, and the other three low scores. Utilizing in-depth interviews and participant observation in these schools and their surrounding neighborhoods, I explain the factors that promote or hinder academic achievement. These include the successful implementation of curriculum, basic-needs, training, literacy, and other programs as well as programs that address the basic needs of students. The research also uncovers some of the deleterious consequences of education funding cutbacks in the province of British Columbia. Finally, I consider some of the theoretical implications of these findings in terms of the debates in sociology of education, segmented assimilation theory, urban poverty, and stratification. The paper concludes that high academic achievement in literacy and numeracy is possible to achieve in public schools serving low-income, immigrant urban populations, if the government provides the resources for teachers and students to succeed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to consider the phenomenon of immigrant adaptation in the United Kingdom through an intergenerational analysis of the nature and determinants of the educational attainments of the children of immigrants, that is, of second-generation immigrants (SGIs). Specifically, the paper examines the role of immigrant status, parental status, and ethnicity. Numerous theoretical accounts of immigrant adaptation and of educational attainment, as well as empirical descriptions of second-generation life outcomes, have highlighted the importance of such determinants. Upon examination of inferential statistics, the results show that immigrant status, and ethnicity appear to play an important yet limited role in the successful attainments of SGIs with regards to holding a university degree, whereas parental status does not. This sheds an interesting light on the phenomenon of adaptation, a phenomenon that ought to be more clearly established, given appropriate data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the utility of “segmented assimilation” theory in predicting the academic outcomes of second generation immigrant students. It uses the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study to regress students’ GPA on measures of “selective acculturation,” particularly fluent bilingualism. An initial OLS regression offers slight support for the idea that fluent bilingual students have more positive academic outcomes than English monolingual students. A multinomial logistic regression then assesses predictors of fluent bilingualism, finding that being Latino and attending a private bilingual school are the main positive predictors of this language category. Finally, the paper considers the argument of segmented assimilation theory that selective acculturation should matter for those students from families with lower socioeconomic status, who are theoretically most “at risk” of “dissonant acculturation”. Interactions intended to demonstrate differences in the influence of selected acculturation variables for Latinos and for those students who are “at risk” were found not to be significant. The analysis therefore offers limited support for hypotheses motivated by segmented assimilation theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relative importance of the school-level factors such as school racial/ethnic composition and income composition in their effects on Latino adolescents' academic achievement. Although previous research suggests that academic achievement is a function of both individual and family level characteristics, no prior work attempted to isolate the effects of race and class as both individual student's characteristics and factors of school composition. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data, the paper examines the effects of school racial and ethnic composition, income composition, ethnicity, immigrant generational, socioeconomic status on the aggregate measure of academic achievement, while controlling for individual (e.g., sex, age) characteristics. These longitudinal data possess a hierarchical data structure in the sense that the individual level factors are viewed as nested within the school-level factors (school racial and ethnic composition effects moderated by school friendship segregation). Hierarchical linear modeling is used as an appropriate statistical procedure for nested data. The findings indicate that it is the income composition of the school, but not the race and ethnic composition, that is negatively related to the academic achievement of Latino adolescents. The poverty level of schools they attend with other students from poor families places many disadvantaged Latinos (apart from their individual economic status) in double jeopardy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses an important gap in the current literature on equity-based educational reform. At present, educational inequality literature focuses primarily on the racial achievement gap. Indeed this focus is mirrored in national reform efforts, particularly the No Child Left Behind Act. Much of these efforts aim to address high standards and accountability for schools, educators and students. In this paper I document the importance of incorporating reform aimed at addressing not only expectations and accountability, but the disparate needs of students in U.S. public schools. To accomplish this distinction I introduce a measure of school context that encompasses educational segregation, neighborhood disorder, school violence and the quality of school facilities. I focus on both neighborhood disorder and school violence in this paper. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), I establish that not only are black and impoverished first grader students living in more violent neighborhoods, but they attend more violent schools. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classical model of educational and occupational attainment is inadequate as a tool for comparative stratification research, for policy oriented studies of social mobility, and for normative discussions of social inequality because of three major shortcomings: (1) the ambiguity of interpretation of model parameters as representing the strength of ascription versus opportunity for achievement in a system of stratification; (2) the vulnerability of the model to specification bias and the resulting difficulty in fully specifying family background; and (3) the confounding of environmental and genetic influences in associations between explanatory variables and attainment outcomes in biological families. These problems can be remedied by using a behavior genetic model that separates genetic and environmental influences on attainment. This paper estimates a multivariate behavior genetic model of adolescent verbal IQ, grade point average, and college plans, using data from the AddHealth study on six types of adolescent sibling pairs living in the same household: MZ twins, DZ twins, full siblings, half siblings, cousins, and non-related siblings. The model estimates variance components due to genetic, common environment, and specific environment influences. Results show a large genetic component, a large specific environmental component, and a relatively small common environmental component for these adolescents in grades 7 to 12 in U.S. schools at the end of the 20th Century. The paper argues that the relative size of the genetic component (heritability) measures opportunity for achievement in a system of stratification, and that the relative size of the common environment (environmentality) measures the strength of social ascription. It follows that parameters of the behavior genetic model can be used to make consistent comparisons of mobility regimes, across social systems, historical periods, and social contexts, thereby realizing an unfulfilled goal of early students of social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the achievement patterns of a sample of 1,492 multi-racial high school students and then examines how their achievement fits into existing theoretical models that explain mono-racial differences in achievement. These theoretical models include status attainment, parenting style, oppositional culture, and educational attitudes. We find one surprise and one result that is consistent with previous research. The consistent result is a description of the academic hierarchy within biracial groups: youth with some black or Latino ancestry fare poorly while those with white or Asian ancestry achieve the most. Furthermore, multi-racial students who self-identify as black or Latino achieve less in school than those who self-identify as white or Asian. The unexpected results is that, unlike previous findings, this paper shows that racial identity and experiences of racism are not strong factors in explaining the achievement of multi-racial or mono-racial students. Instead, the school achievement of multi-racials is related to a mix of the variables present in explanations for each monoracial group, including SES, peer academic values, and the degree to which the youth fears the consequences of school failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between class size and student achievement at the kindergarten level. Different mechanisms through which class size affects achievement are analyzed, in particular the interactive effect of class size and instructional practices. Four questions are posed: Is there a direct effect of class size on student achievement? Is this association mediated by instructional practices? Is there an interaction between class size and instruction? Is the effect of class size different for economically and academically disadvantaged students? The analysis is based on nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). The paper uses both hieararchical linear models of students within classes and teacher fixed effect regressions--to address the issue of unobserved heterogeneity among teachers. Contrary to the Project STAR? results, these findings do not present any evidence of direct effects and only few indirect effects of class size on reading and mathematic student achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has promulgated a variety of family policies that exert extensive influences on children¡¯s education. Among those policies, there are two important ones: the one-child policy and the household registration policy. This paper examines these policies in terms of their respective impact on children¡¯s education. One-child policy is no doubt a family policy since it directly regulates on the number of children that a married couple can have, and the concerning family and economic benefits. The household registration policies conform to the broad definition of family policy (Gautheier 1999: 17), which are essentially public policies addressing problems that families would experience in a society. Also, according to Shirley Zimmerman, everything governments do that affects or relates to families can be regarded as a family policy (Zimmerman 1995: 4). Although this is a very broad definition of family policies, I still want to address the household registration policy in this paper for two reasons: one is the significant influence of this policy upon families and children¡¯s education, especially for the rural families and their children; the other is its correlation with the one-child policy. This paper will discuss the following problems: What are the main contents of these policies? How do these policies affect children¡¯s education? How does the one-child policy work hand-in-hand with the household registration policy to affect rural children¡¯s education? Why do we need the further research on the effects of the two family policies on children¡¯s education? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

K-16 partnerships, in which colleges work together with K-12 schools to improve education for at-risk students, are a new trend in educational reform. One example of this trend is the South Dakota State University-Flandreau Indian School Success Academy. SDSU-FIS Success Academy is an early and intensive college preparatory program for students attending the Flandreau Indian School, the oldest continually operating federal Indian boarding school in the country. SDSU-FIS Success Academy, now in its third year, serves 250 freshmen, sophomores and juniors and involves more than 60 SDSU faculty, staff and students. Plans are underway to make Success Academy a four-year college bridge program during the 2003-04 academic year. This paper examines Success Academy from a critical theory perspective. Success Academy rests on six fundamental assumptions that contribute to its effectiveness: o Cooperate respectfully. o Be persistent, always keeping the long-term perspective in mind. o Change the system, not the student. o Realize that the cultural capital it takes for low-income students of color to succeed in school can be acquired rather than inherited. o Strengthen the ethnic identity of the students you serve, realizing that this can empower them to succeed in school and to prevail over seemingly insurmountable obstacles. o Enlist the help of significant others in the lives of Native American students?their relatives, tribal leaders and other Indian students?to help them construct positive self-definitions of themselves as successful scholars. The paper concludes with evaluation data, both quantitative and qualitative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group research projects are frequently used to teach undergraduate research methods. This paper examines the individual characteristics, group characteristics, and task characteristics associated with student achievement and positive student experiences in group research projects. It also examines cohort differences in student achievement and experiences. The sample includes 241 students who completed a sociology research methods course at a small private liberal arts institution in the Northeast between 2004 and 2014. I find that group characteristics (group size, gender and racial composition) and assigned research method are associated with group achievement (grade on research project) but not individual achievement (grade on final paper). Individual characteristics (gender, race, and average grade on midterm exams) are associated with individual achievement but not group achievement. Cohort is associated with student experiences, but not student achievement; more recent student cohorts describe more negative experiences. The findings raise questions about whether to adapt the pedagogy of group projects in sociology research methods courses to reflect changes in the 21st century undergraduate population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Goffmanian dramaturgical framework to account for emergence of a particular style of sociological work exemplified by sociology in the USSR. The history of Soviet sociology unearths several puzzles. It was rapidly institutionalized which in the Soviet times necessarily implied support from the Party authorities, but at the same time became target of frequent repressions; its leaders enjoyed wide popularity then and remain objects of worship afterwards although their particular texts from the Soviet era are scarcely remembered and their attempts at theorizing are disregarded; finally, its intellectual achievements prove not translatable to other cultural contexts. This paper presents the results of a historical research to argue that all of this could be explained by the fact that Soviet sociology had to deal essentially with social, rather than natural, secrecy - to struggle with intentionally created deficit of information. Any knowledge claim is embedded into a wider cosmological framework and the dominant framework of the Soviet society described it as a single formal organization designed according to an all-embracing plan of movement towards Communism. A study of any aspect of social life was essentially an evaluation of this plan and an assessment of its implementation. This vision of their research terrain charged sociologists with new intellectual mission of criticizing existing societal designs, inventing new ones and taking on tasks of assigning political blame. This explains repressions against them, vivid public interest to their work, and the fact that the Soviet era left many heroic figures but few intellectual legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher and mentor relationships are one of the most important school experiences shaping students' academic outcomes. This paper examines the association between multiple dimensions of teacher and mentor relationships and student academic achievement in a midsized urban district in the Midwest using a school climate survey and linked administrative data. Preliminary results show that Black students report lower levels of almost all aspects of teacher and mentor relationships compared to other students including equitable treatment, respectful treatment, and trust and respect for their teacher. Results from multivariate models indicate that teacher and mentor relationships are predictive of student academic achievement as measured by transcript grades.1 However, these overall associations mask variation across groups: most aspects of teacher and mentor relationships were predictive of academic achievement for White and Asian students, but not Black or Latino students. These findings highlight two ways that social relations contribute to the racial achievement gap: inequality in the quality of relationships with teachers and mentors, and inequality in the impact of these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinx students are a growing number of all public school students and are dispersing into new regions of the country. In this paper, we use national data from the Stanford Education Data Archive and estimates of district change to compare the learning rates of Latinx in new and traditional destinations. We find no aggregate differences in growth rates between new and traditional destinations in math or ELA, but do find that Latinx learn math more slowly as in districts where the percent of Latinx in the district grew more rapidly between 1990 and 2008. Since the Latinx population is expected to continue growing, this finding portends continued low achievement in math for many Latinx. Growth in ELA is positively associated with attending districts with relatively many Latinx, many foreign born Latinx, and being less integrated with whites within the district. These findings are consistent with predictions from theories of immigrant optimism, enclaves, and group threat but not predictions from models of peer effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the moderating effect of boarding on inequality of academic achievement, and whether such an effect varies between urban and rural areas in China. I hypothesize that boarding at school alleviates academic inequality among students of different social origins through two major mechanisms: (1) rigid school-home dissociation, and (2) the egalitarian ethos of the boarding school, including a unified curriculum arrangement, unbiased teacher preferences, compensational resource distribution for students of lower social origins and common organized extra-curricular activities. Such an alleviation effect is expected to be larger in urban areas than in rural areas, due to different historical backgrounds and institutional contexts. I conduct propensity-score weighted regressions based on the data from the China Education Panel Survey 2013-2014. The findings show that all else being equal, boarding is more beneficial to students of lower social origins than to those of higher social origins. In addition, boarding students experience more rigid school-home dissociation and more egalitarian teaching ethos than their non-boarding counterparts. These features are more evident in urban schools. In other words, boarding schools in China play an important role in alleviating inequality of academic achievement within schools, and urban boarding schools are doing better at this task than rural ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial and ethnic disparities in educational attainment are a persistent part of American life. Specifically, whites outpace both African Americans and Latinos in just about every measure of educational achievement, including years of attainment and standardized test scores. Researchers seeking to understand race and ethnic differences have employed a number of measures of family background information to try and explain the continuing gap. One promising line of research has been the relatively recent focus on wealth rather than income. Wealth represents a more complete measure of family economic prowess, and therefore, should be able to more completely explain race and ethnic differential in achievement. In this paper, we argue that wealth differentials should be able to explain the racial and ethnic gap in education -- not just partially, but completely. In this paper we take a multi-level approach to model wealth as a family level effect. Results indicate that accounting for the distribution of wealth over time and among family members (e.g., sibling groups) more comprehensively explains the persistent gap in educational achievement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attaining a high level of proficiency in mathematics is key for accessing college majors such as biological and physical science, engineering, and business. Students graduating with these majors typically obtain higher earnings early in their careers than students with other majors not requiring mathematics. Students not only must have taken the necessary mathematics courses by the end of high school to qualify for the entry-level courses in technical majors, but students must also have achieved a sufficient level of proficiency to actually handle additional mathematics courses in college. Research has shown that family background has a strong influence on educational achievement in general and on mathematics achievement in particular. The purpose of the present paper is to examine mathematics achievement among students in their senior year in high school. The focus of the analysis is how parental occupational status interacts with family structure in influencing mathematics achievement. The analysis in this paper shows that having high parental occupational status matters for students living in mother/father families and in mother-only families but there is no influence of parental occupational status in mother/stepfather families. The data for the analysis comes from the 2002 and 2004 waves of the Education Longitudinal Study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger project that follows the lives of 28 African American teenagers in a diverse small-city high school in the Northeast. Through interviews and observations at public events, this longitudinal study traces their hopes, fears, and educational experiences with the goal of gaining insight into the long standing dilemma of persistent racial and ethnic achievement differences in high school. The paper focuses on a subset of male and female athletes and explores the role sports may play as a mediating factor in providing a positive school experience, greater school attachment, and academic achievement. I make three main points. First, at the most obvious level, high school sports is the one area where racial and class barriers break down. The manner, however, in which sports provide the occasion for cross racial friendships differs for male and female athletes. Second, high school sports in general provide a means for greater school attachment, an incentive for academic achievement, and a promised path to a college education, yet few realize the promise. Nevertheless, sports may have been a key reason why they lasted as long as they did in high school, with most graduating. Third, the role of coaches becomes an important source of social and cultural capital for some, although it varies by athlete and sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores two approaches to considering neighborhoods and schools as simultaneous contexts for adolescent educational attainment. First, multi-level model estimates show that indicators of neighborhood socioeconomic status predict high school graduation and college attendance, while both neighborhood SES and mean neighborhood educational attainment also matter for college attendance. Next, the school is considered as a context for competition and comparison, and the relative resources of one's neighborhood are compared to others' in one's school. Results show that being from a more disadvantaged neighborhood than peers decreases the odds of high school graduation, controlling for one's own neighborhood characteristics. Finally, interactions between neighborhood disadvantage and specific school characteristics are modeled, and results suggest that attending a school with highly ambitious peers may offset the negative impact of coming from a disadvantaged neighborhood for college attendance. While not without limitations, the paper contributes to existing research by demonstrating two approaches to considering these two important contexts for academic success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mentorship programs for adolescents have become increasingly popular, and they boast a wide variety of positive results for the young people involved, including increased educational achievement and attainment. In many ways, however, the keys to their success are still a mystery. Few large-scale studies, for instance, have examined if some approaches to mentor-mentee matching are more beneficial than others, and theories that might be used to guide the pairing of mentors and mentees seem to offer conflicting advice. In short, mentoring programs may be popular, but there is little theoretical or empirical evidence to help us understand the factors that lead to successful matches.In this paper, I review existing studies of mentoring to highlight what we know about successful mentoring relationships. I pay special attention to race-matching and how it may influence the educational attainment of mentees. Then I present a theoretically and empirically grounded model of mentoring relationships and describe how the model will be tested using data from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters (BBBS) program. This paper will build on existing research in an attempt to more fully understand the impact of mentor influence. The BBBS dataset will be used to re-test previous findings of the importance of race-matched mentors and determine if they have a more positive impact than non-matched mentors. I will then examine if the educational attainment of mentors has any impact on the educational attainment of their mentees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, entitled "Putting a 'Highly Qualified' Teacher in Every Classroom: Recognizing Disparities in Credentials" focuses on the teaching credentials of the child's teacher. This paper establishes that not only do first-grade students face school-level inequality in educational achievement and educational context, they also face it in their own classrooms, with disparities in their teacher's qualifications. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), I establish that black children are less likely to have teachers with appropriate certification in elementary education. Children living in households that own their own home have teachers with more education and with better certification. Children in households with unemployment also must endure classrooms with teachers who are not certified in elementary education and are exposed to teachers with less teaching experience. Thus, not only are their households unstable, one could consider their teachers lack of experience as an indicator of classroom instability as well. This analysis reveals an important gap in access to "highly" qualified teachers. As there are established gaps in teacher pay and teaching climate, it is possible that students with the least qualified teachers are nested within schools with lower pay and poor teaching climates, thus posing a significant problem for their school in recruiting "highly qualified" teachers. As disparities in teacher quality reveal significant relationships with student outcomes, this gap in teacher qualifications poses an important barrier to children's achievement, and it occurs in the first-grade. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the massive sample size of the US census to compare rates of progress through elementary school for children of different family types, specifically children of same-sex cohabiting couples with children of various types of families headed by heterosexual parents. This paper represents the first (as far as the author knows) large sample nationally representative study of the children of same-sex couples. The results show that children of same-sex couples are as likely to make normal progress through school as the children of heterosexual cohabiting couples. Heterosexual married couples are the family type whose children have the lowest rates of grade retention, but the advantage of heterosexual married couples is mostly due to their higher SES. In general there are only modest differences in progress through school between children of different family types. Children of all family types (including children of same-sex couples) are far more likely to be making normal progress through school than children living in group quarters. Some implications are discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges James Coleman's concept of "inter-generational closure" as social capital. It seeks a better understanding of the process of intergenerational transmission of social capital by differentiating the social capital available to parents and that which is available to children. Second, the paper contextualizes the concept of social capital in educational settings by examining the content of the resources that are embedded in social ties. We highlight whether the resources conform to the institutional goals of schools, and whether the intentions of actors activating the resources are consistent with these norms. The data used for this study are the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002) base year and first follow-up data. The parent questionnaire of ELS:2002 includes various questions related to social capital that highlight the content of social ties. We use structural equation modeling (SEM) to test our hypothesis. The SEM framework allows us to model measurement error, which will allow the structural relations between latent variables to be more accurately estimated. The SEM also allows us to fit the structural model, and test the extent to which children's social capital mediates the effect of parent social capital on student achievement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational attainment is widely viewed as a key determinant of social mobility in the US and across the world (Blau and Duncan, 1967, Shavit and Blossfed, 1993). The basic model of social stratification was simply based on social origins which were basically measured by parental educational and occupational statuses. Studies in the field of social stratification in the United States (US) reported that religion can be considered as a family background variable in the model of status attainment (Warren, 1970, Mueller, 1980) due to the fact that the values and achievement orientations would be differed across religious groups. Studies in the US reported significant advantages of Jewish on educational attainment compared to two other major religious groups: Protestants and Catholics (Steinberg, 1974). There was, however, not persistent advantage of either Protestant or Catholic religious group in education and social mobility. Comparisons between Protestants and Catholics yielded greater in educational achievement among Protestants than Catholics (Fox and Jacson, 1973, Roof, 1979). In contrast, Greeley (1976) reported higher educational achievement in some Catholic groups than Protestants. Recent studies found out that Catholics attained lower years of schooling than Buddhist religion or no religious group in Vietnam (Nguyen, 2000). However, there had not been any study to address systematically effects of religious affiliation on educational attainment across Southeast Asian countries where the majority of population was Buddhists. This paper addressed a comparative analysis of educational attainment based on religious background of individuals aged 25 and older using cohort analysis in five Southeast Asian countries: Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The data sets using in this analysis are individual country's micro census data collected in 1999 and 2000 . In order to compare effects of religion on educational attainment, religious affiliation, parental educational level and their occupation were coded into several broad categories across four countries. Of particular interest, the analysis was conducted by these keys religious groups in SEA: Buddhists, Christian/Catholics, Islam, and no religion. The paper had two key components: 1) descriptive analysis of religion affiliation in these countries and display the patterns of years of schooling completed across religious groups and birth cohorts in each country; and 2) multivariate analysis of determinants of background characteristics on educational attainment with focus on parental education and occupation, family size, family structure, and religious affiliation. The main purpose of this analysis was to discuss a causal link between religion and educational attainment and examine whether this relationship had changed across birth cohorts and gender. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on two years (2002-2004) of comparative ethnographic research on two high school student activist networks in two cities on the West Coast, this paper explores issues of race, resistance, and schooling as they are refracted through the lens of teenage student activism. Specifically, this paper focuses on the role of academic achievement among Oakland youth activists as a political ideology of resistance and a social movement strategy towards changing school conditions. I demonstrate how doing well in school became an inextricable part of youth political strategy and resistance in Oakland, and show how students were able to criticize their schooling and what they perceived to be white supremacist education while still devoting themselves to getting good grades. I contrast this model of youth resistance with the striking absence of school achievement as either a political ideology or social movement tactic among white, middle class high school students in Portland, where academic achievement remained a de-politicized and private issue. I argue that Portland students' whiteness and middle-class status obviated the need to politicize academic achievement within their movement, and allowed them to sometimes successfully negotiate with school administrators regardless of their academic standing. The politicization of academic achievement demonstrates how age-stratified power differentials within school systems: namely those between adult administrators and adolescent students, are structured along lines of racial and class systems of power and privilege. In turn, the strategies that teenagers employ to disrupt adult power and to gain leverage in school decision-making processes are also structured along these same lines. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although universities' world-wide rankings are very popular today, their design and methods are still astonishingly inaccurate. In this paper we assess, in particular, the Academic World Ranking of Universities (ARWU) published by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The analyses in this paper demonstrate serious shortcomings in the ARWU ranking methods. One key deficiency is that universities' scale differences are neglected because the whole input side is omitted. Bluntly speaking, in the ARWU ranking scientifically productive universities with small resources are not given justice. By re-sampling and reanalyzing the ARWU data, the paper proposes its own input-output analysis for measuring universities' scientific productivity. The basic idea is that every university whose output share exceeds its input share is productive. The case study develops a productivity analysis on Scandinavian universities in which multidisciplinary and specialized universities are evaluated on their own terms; the results deviate significantly from the ARWU ranking. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resistance theories of education suggest that low academic achievement among Mexican-origin students is the result of attitudes and behaviors that are intended to challenge some aspect of schooling. Much of the prevailing research using this theoretical framework focuses on the attitudes and behaviors of high school students, while significantly less attention is paid to the attitudes and behaviors of younger students. As a result, we know very little about the development of resistance and academic disengagement over time. This paper provides a close look at the varying contexts in which student behavior is displayed, given meaning, interpreted and labeled, and the consequences that has for students' trajectories of engagement. The findings of this study, based on a two-year ethnographic study of ten Mexican-origin students making the transition from elementary to middle school, suggest that notions of good and bad behavior, and what it means to be a "good" student, are fluid and changeable, depending on the groups of reference in the classroom and how students manage their academic performance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the role that social capital among teachers plays in raising student achievement in the context of comprehensive school reform (CSR), a school improvement strategy designed to change such school- and classroom-level processes as governance and school organization, curriculum and instruction, professional development, and parental involvement. CSR implementation may encourage daily collaboration among teachers and thereby increase what sociologists refer to as "social capital" or resources stemming from social relations (Burt 1992; Coleman 1988). Using a quasi-experimental research design, we first examine the extent to which CSR helps teachers accumulate social capital. Second, we assess whether social capital mediates the influence of CSR on student achievement. Our results underscore the importance of considering social capital in studies of CSR. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, research has started to examine the relationship between assets and adult well-being. Yet, there remains little research about whether parents' assets could influence child welfare, including cognitive development. The paper is part of a larger research project that investigates (1) the nature and extent of parental wealth and its influence on multiple child outcomes and (2) explores how the timing of wealth influences child development. The analyses presented here are a first step at examining whether net worth affects child achievement, specifically young children's achievement in mathematics. Using the NLSY79 Mother-Child file, results reveal that children from wealthier families tend to perform better on the PIAT math test, even after extensive controls for parents' age, socio-economic status, child characteristics, measures of the quality of the home environment and parents' aspirations for their child's education. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, which focuses on an ethnographic study in an urban magnet school, I discuss how discourses surrounding the relationship between learning and life paths could have negative implications for students' identities as science learners. The prevalent schema regarding the purposes of learning particular subjects are structures that both constrain and enable students' agency by delineating the available subject positions, thereby highlighting a few possibilities for life paths while obscuring others. One schema that emerges in this school, the binary division between college-goers and non-college goers, is not particularly flexible in the subject positions offered. The results suggest that developing an identity associated with school science may be more likely if the student identifies as college-bound or is willing to align with a privileged group in an unequal economic system. In the context of inequalities in Philadelphia, discourses regarding learning, achievement, and life paths can become laden with race as well as class biases. The results of this study suggest that students who do not easily fall into an available subject position may not perceive a viable group with which to identify, and therefore may have less incentive for acquiring the knowledge for participation in a science-related community. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Career interruption among educated women professionals, or stopping out, is a subject of considerable popular and academic interest. This paper reports on an in-depth qualitative study of 54 professional women who have interrupted their careers and are currently at-home mothers. We found that the majority of these women were strongly committed to their careers and were pushed (not just pulled) out of the workforce by workplace policies and culture that did not accommodate their family needs. However, once home, a variety of factors associated with their adaptation to home life created a change in their values and interests such that the majority of women lost commitment to their former careers (though not to work itself), either seeking alternative paths associated with traditional professions for women, or losing career direction altogether. This profound shift in career orientation meant that the majority of women were either not planning or uncertain about returning to their former occupations. These findings suggest that departure from the work force, even temporarily, may have long-term adverse consequences for certain aspects of women's career development and commitment. For employers who want to retain these workers in the long run, for women who seek to combine work and family, and for the advancement of gender equity, our results argue for policies that facilitate career persistence during periods of high family demand by accommodating work-family needs at different life-cycle and family stages, and raise questions about policies that seek to accommodate women's work-family responsibilities via career exit and re-entry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acting white hypothesis has captured the scholarly and popular imagination since the middle 1980s. Fordham and Ogbu argued that as a result of historic and contemporary discrimination, Black students undermine their school success by adopting oppositional orientations toward education. More specifically, they argued that high achieving Black students faced a burden of acting white. Recent work suggests that negative peer pressure is not pervasive among black students and that high achieving students have similar experiences of negative peer pressure regardless of race. In this paper, we use interview and existing school data to show that Black students are generally achievement oriented (even when they perceive racial discrimination in educational and employment), that their peers encourage high achievement, and that students are teased as often for low achievement as for high achievement. Moreover, some students who report negative peer pressure (teasing associated with high achievement) also report positive peer pressure (teasing for low-achievement and encouragement to perform better). Finally, we show that students often do not perceive achievement-related teasing as rooted in animosity. Understanding these processes can help us reframe our understanding of race and achievement and add complexity to work on peer relationships among Black adolescents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the preliminary analysis of the association of school quality with immigrant status using traditional and new measures, and the association of immigrant status and educational attainment by using standardized test scores. We used the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88). Our analysis shows significant associations between school quality and immigrant status and between educational attainment and immigrant status, which encourages further research on the relationships between educational outcomes and school quality for immigrant children. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the association between religiosity and academic achievement among adolescents. Recent research demonstrates a positive association between religiosity and academic success. However, some studies show that this is due to family and community factors; for example, variation in levels of family capital among religious affiliates may explain this association. Yet, whether religious factors affect academic achievement among adolescents may also be due to the concordance or discordance of religiosity among parents and their children. Using two years of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) (n=8,051), we examine the association between adolescent religiosity, parent religiosity, and academic achievement, in light of the effects of family and community capital. The results indicate that the association between religiosity and academic achievement is largely independent of family and community capital, but that it depends on the joint religiosity of parents and adolescents. In particular, the highest achievement is predicted when parents and adolescents report similar levels of religiosity; the lowest when parents report high religiosity and adolescents report low religiosity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a descriptive analysis of the economic markers in the transition to adulthood since the early 1970s. Based upon the cumulative data file of the General Social Surveys (1972-2004), we focus our efforts on demonstrating three theses. We first illustrate how the temporal trend of young adults' economic agency is coupled with the postponement of demographic events that make up the transition to adulthood. To emphasize, we do not intend to build a causal link between economic agency and the timing of transition events. Instead, we limit our goal to identifying the economic markers that best capture the demographic trend we have observed in the transition to adulthood since the entrance to a service economy. Second, because obtaining economic security and sufficient family wages requires time investment in education and the labor market, we therefore break down the samples according to the amount of educational achievements and gender to show how education and gender mediate the relationship between economic agency and the timing of demographic events in the transition to adulthood. In line with the principle of duration dependence, we argue that prolonged education and increased investment in the labor market help produce a higher level of economy agency, but which simultaneously causes delays for the transition to adulthood. Finally, although the temporal relationship between economic agency and the timing of transition events reflects the constructing forces of the service economy, it could also be a manifestation of young adults' voluntary actions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (2002) was touted as a major legislative achievement in President George W. Bush's first term, which emphasizes a neoclassical economic based model that assumes that markets and competition will produce a competitive education system. This paper offers a case study of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School (CMS) District in Charlotte, North Carolina to test both the efficacy and assumptions of NCLB (2002). Utilizing hierarchical linear modeling of population data for all public elementary schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, this research explores whether race-gender achievement gaps are ameliorated or exacerbated following a unitary court declaration and whether neoclassical theoretical assumptions are supported or not. Contrary to neoclassical assumptions, findings suggest that school choice resulted in increased segregation in CMS and greater inequality. In addition, this research found that both black male and female students had lower achievement scores and white females had lower achievement scores in racially segregated black schools after choice was implemented. The result is that, as school choice increased racial isolation in schools and black students are at risk of having lower scores on their end of grade tests. This result directly contradicts the stated goal of No Child Left Behind, which seeks to increase test scores, performance and accountability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a decade, researchers and policy analysts have been observing trends in state policy activity related to standards-based educational reform and trends in student achievement. It was perhaps inevitable that these two strands would converge to create a line of inquiry investigating whether state policies have been responsible for gains in student achievement. Despite efforts along these lines, establishing a firm connection between state policy and student achievement has proven to be a rather elusive target. As a result, a research-based consensus on the effectiveness of standards-based reform has yet to emerge. This paper presents the results of a study conducted to explore this policy-achievement connection. Written to be accessible to a non-technical audience, this report first presents descriptive information on trends in state policy and achievement over the past decade. This preliminary analysis provides valuable context for the more sophisticated regression-based models that follow, where we measure policy effects. We find strong evidence that implementing a solid program of standards-based-education policies has been associated with significant gains in mathematics achievement over the past decade, as measured by NAEP. Positive but less dramatic results are also found for achievement in reading. However, these benefits appear to be limited to certain elements of a standards-based approach-academic-content standards, aligned assessments, and accountability. Results suggest that policies related to improving teacher quality are negatively related to achievement growth, although the ultimate reason for this relationship remains unclear. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The great increase in the number of students from immigrant families in U.S. classrooms has prompted researchers to closely examine their educational achievement patterns. Past research predominantly focused on the educational achievement of adolescent immigrants in secondary and postsecondary institutions, while largely ignoring the learning of younger immigrant students. There is a need for studying the educational performance of immigrant children at the earliest stages of schooling. Recent research finds that learning disadvantages that develop early on in formal education persist thorough out an individual's educational career, and impacts how far they will pursue education. For immigrant children possibilities of upward socioeconomic mobility may be greatly shaped by disadvantages that emerge at the earliest stages of schooling. This paper makes use of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study -Kindergarten Cohort to study how the factors of race, English usage at home, and immigrant generational status impact the educational preparedness and achievement of immigrant children. Preliminary findings indicate the factors of generational status and English usage at home impact the educational performance of Latino and Asian immigrant children in different manners. This study provides evidence that may offer support for theoretical frameworks employed to understand how immigrants integrate into American society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I have sought to move beyond the gender income studies that use the white male earnings as a reference wage, in the interrogation of income disparities that exist for an assortment of racial and ethnic groups. Using the data from the "Merged Outgoing Rotation Groups" (2001), I have examined the structure of earnings inequality between African American men and women, through quantile regression decomposition with bootstrapped standard errors. The results show a rather complicated pattern in which while the higher educational achievement of African American women does improve their earnings, it is nevertheless the case that at the highest income levels, African American men do earn more on account of both their higher levels of education as well as differential returns to education. Among the labor market characteristics that confer advantages to African American men are the usual hours of work per week, union membership and occupational segregation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers race/ethnic differences in the formation of math trajectories within high school separately by gender, to examine the extent to which experiences and outcomes are clearly delineated by race/ethnicity, or gender, or both. The analyses utilize data from the new Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study (AHAA), the high school transcript study that is a component of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth). The results indicate that compared to their white male peers, African American and Latino males receive less of a benefit from beginning high school in Algebra I, in terms of the amount of advanced math they take by the end of high school. Yet minority girls receive the same positive returns to taking Algebra I as their female peers. Additionally, while minority male students have lower grades, this does not explain nor diminish the lower returns they receive to early placement. The results underscore some progress on behalf of minority females, while at the same time highlighting the particular academic disadvantages suffered by minority males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A relatively neglected problem is the analysis of how individuals derive social capital from more than one context, and the extent to which they may benefit from the capital derived from each context. In this paper we address this deficit through a study of child reading achievement. We hypothesize that children derive social capital from both their families and from their schools, and we believe that capital from each context is influential in promoting reading achievement and use two national data sets (NELS and NLSY79) to test these hypotheses. We first demonstrate that it is feasible to derive sound models of capital in these two respective contexts, the home and the school. We then demonstrate that capital from each context is helpful to promoting child reading achievement. Our empirical strategies allow us to evaluate the extent to which specific measures of capital actually reflect more than one context simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the link between parent-child relationships and the transition to parenthood. We propose that parent-child relationships have an affective dimension that accelerates the transition to parenthood as these children become young adults themselves. We also hypothesize a supportive dimension of parent-child relationships that leads to greater educational achievement in young adults, which would delay the transition to parenthood. Using event-history models, we test these hypotheses with two datasets: the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children (IPSPC) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The results differ across datasets. While educational experiences decrease the rate of parenthood in both datasets, these educational experiences are largely unrelated to parent-child relationships. In the IPSPC, parent-child relationships increase the rate of parenthood once a suppressor effect of marriage is controlled. In the Add Health, parent-child relationships consistently decrease the rate of parenthood in all models. These disparate findings may be related to substantial differences in the target population of the two studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to examine the influence of neighborhood characteristics on the academic outcomes of children in middle childhood. Prior research has examined structural features of the community and has evaluated their associations with youth outcomes (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1993; Kowaleski-Jones, 2000). Other research has related perceptions of community environment to problematic youth development (Aneshensel & Sucoff, 1996). Our work seeks to bridge these two streams of research by considering the influence of both objective and subjective measures of the community environment on school-aged children. Data are drawn from the 1990 Census and the 1997 Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement. Because PSID data is geographically clustered, we model our data using hierarchical linear models. Results indicate a negative influence of living in a community with low socioeconomic resources for academic achievement. In contrast, results indicate a positive role for living in a community rich in immigrant concentration for school related behavioral adjustment and achievement outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do all collegiate achievers hold equally wealthy positions in society therefore become powerful in the end? Thirty-two American Rhodes Scholars are annually selected for academic excellence, exemplary character, and potential for leadership roles from their collegiate institutions. A central question asked in this paper focuses on the relationships among cultural capital, social capital (embedded resources in social networks) and status attainment of these exceptional achievers. Our analysis shows that neither the access to childhood cultural capital nor the influence of the prestige of baccalaureate credentials has contributed to acquiring better jobs and earning higher income. Oxford experience and social relations among Rhodes Scholars have not yielded significantly. We find, however, that professional school degrees and training particularly from law and medicine have substantially contributed their later socioeconomic standing. Finally, perhaps the most notable finding of this study is that the likelihood of getting better jobs and higher income is greatly enhanced by the aggregate of social networks and political resources mobilized by these high achievers. Reviewing across five historical cohorts of former American Rhodes Scholars from 1947 to 1992, the role of social capital and political ties in advancing their socioeconomic standing seems to have progressively increased. The study is based on the 2001 survey of 1100 Rhodes Scholars covering classes from 1947 to 1992 that yielded 875 respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]