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Despite improved access in expanded postsecondary systems, the great majority of bachelor’s degree graduates are taking considerably longer than the allotted four years to complete their four-year degrees. Taking longer to finish one’s BA has become so pervasive in the United States that it has become the norm for official statistics released by the Department of Education to report graduation rates across a six-year window. While higher education scholars have increasingly explored how social class impacts college dropout, attrition, and completion, they have yet to examine the role social class plays in completing a four-year bachelor’s degree on time. In this paper, we draw on the most recent cohort of the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Survey (2008–2009) to examine who completes their bachelor’s degrees on time. Our results indicate that despite controlling for academic performance, educational behaviors, program characteristics, and institutional characteristics, graduates from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do experience difficulties completing their degrees on time. Moreover, our results also reveal that the nature of these relationships vary for traditional and nontraditional students. Our findings highlight another important, albeit less obvious, way where inequality is maintained in expanded postsecondary systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The community college is both important and controversial. It now enrolls 36 percent of all students in college. But there is much debate over whether it aids or hinders its students' socioeconomic attainment. This paper aims to measure the community college `s effects and to explain how those effects are produced. In the first section, I critically synthesize research comparing the effects of community colleges and the effects of other postsecondary institutions on educational attainment and economic success. I conclude that baccalaureate aspirants entering community colleges attain less educationally and economically than comparable students entering four-year colleges. But community-college entrants seeking only subbaccalaureate vocational training seem to get more education than if they had entered a four-year college. However, the research allows no conclusion on which type of institution best promotes the economic success of subbaccalaureate aspirants. In the second section of the paper, I develop a model of the factors that impede the educational attainment of community-college entrants who aspire to a baccalaureate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses individual-level data to present new evidence on the impact of discrimination, class, family structure, and culture on black schooling. That evidence is used to reconsider several of the important conclusions of Lieberson's (1980) analysis of schooling. The paper confirms Lieberson's conclusions about the relative importance of economic well-being and the unimportance of family structure. When family background is controlled, Lieberson's conclusions concerning grade attainment in the early years of the century are confirmed. However, the use of the early attainment data to study the importance of cultural factors is complicated by an understanding of child labor opportunities. Measures of school performance less affected by that complication are offered. Finally, the appendix questions the evidence for Lieberson's contention that changes in the relative position of blacks were especially great in the 1925-35 birth cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turner's (1960) sponsored and contest mobility framework has been much utilized in analyzing mobility in England and the United States. This paper focuses on Turner's more central concern with how folk norms influence educational practices and the efforts to reform them. To test Turner's proposition that reformers and reform debates are bound by the logic of folk norms, I investigated efforts to reform the General Certificate of Education examinations in English secondary education between 1966 and 1976. Qualitative analysis of focused interviews and documentary data suggests that English educators and reformers alike were by and large actuated and constrained by sponsorship beliefs. But the paper moves beyond Turner. It reveals how sponsorship folk norms and functions are inscribed in the ideology and interests of particular educational constituencies who effectively institutionalized and perpetuated sponsorship principles in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares labor market effects on the expansion of higher education after World War II for men and women in two- and four-year institutions. The paper shows that across all groups, professional-technical employment had a positive effect on enrollment expansion. Contrary to the hypothesis that students in two-year schools provide a better surplus labor pool than students in four-year schools, I found few significant differences in the predictors of expansion in these two sectors. Growth in men's enrollments was largely unaffected by labor market conditions, but growth in women's enrollments was affected by a variety of factors, some of which appear to be due to a surplus labor pool dynamic and some of which appear to be due to women's attempts to prepare themselves for occupational roles. I argue that enrollments respond to labor market conditions only when they are expanding rapidly, which was more the case for women's enrollments during this period than for men's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines factors that contribute to changes in teachers over time and the meanings that teachers attach to such factors. Intensive case studies were conducted over a period of four years in two U.S. high schools, one in the Northeast, the other in the Southeast. Unstructured interviews, open-ended questionnaires, and observations were used to collect data from teachers in each school. Approximately 400 hours were spent in each school. Analyses of the data indicated, among other things, that students have a humanizing effect on teachers. This paper discusses these data in terms of Turner's (1956, 1971, 1978) theoretical discussion of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the expansion of and the relative emphasis on secondary vocational education is placed in a broad historical and cross-national perspective. First, the origins of technical-vocational education in both European and non-European systems are briefly outlined. Second, contemporary enrollment patterns in vocational education (1950-1975) are analyzed in light of the paper's main empirical finding: the relative share of secondary vocational education has declined in almost every national educational system. Third, a number of causal factors are introduced to account for cross-national and temporal variation in the proportion of secondary vocational enrollments. Finally, the paper discusses why the structural shift away from vocational education is best understood in the framework of recent world-system theories of educational expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jencks et al. (1983) provide two replications of the Wisconsin status attainment model, comparing their results closely to the results reported by Sewell and Hauser (1975). While concluding that the Wisconsin data are not seriously biased, they raise a number of questions regarding the interpretation of the model. Hauser et al. (1983), while not responding to the Jencks et al. paper directly, provide analyses which speak to the issues they raise. Using multiple indicators of most concepts in the model and the LISREL approach to estimation, they suggest a return to the basic causal chain interpretation originally posited by Sewell et al. (/970). The Hauser et al. estimation procedures are complex, and this paper attempts to explicate them. While the Hauser et al. analysis answers a number of questions and clarifies some important issues, many questions remain including the following: What is the meaning and interpretation of "unmeasured" family background? Should disaggregated measures of ability and performance be used rather than composites? Is a more elaborate model of the socialization process, particularly one which permits reciprocal effects, required to understand status attainment? Finally, what is required to deal effectively with charges that the status attainment model ignores social structure? This paper attempts to answer those questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the argument that school sponsorship mechanisms are, relative to significant others' influence (SOI), a more effective determinant of educational plans and attainment in societies geared toward sponsored mobility. This argument has been previously validated with respect to aspirations for higher education in Israel. The present paper analyzes the determinants of curriculum placement in Israeli high schools. In particular, it examines the relative impact of SOI versus ability grouping at the junior high level. A path analysis of longitudinal data for a representative sample of junior high students shows that their aspirations for specific high school training are determined mainly by SOI. Yet, their curriculum placement in the tenth grade is affected by ability grouping much more than by SOI or aspirations. These findings are supported by additional discriminant analyses of high school aspiration tracks and track placement. It is also found that the high school tracking of students of Oriental origin is more heavily influenced by institutional mechanisms than the tracking of their Ashkenazi counterparts. The above processes are interpreted as indicative of a transitional period in the formation of educational careers in sponsorship-oriented systems. In such systems, sponsorship mechanisms may determine educational attainment at all school levels, but their cumulative effect on aspirations is apparent only at an advanced stage of schooling. Comparative studies which may further validate this thesis are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper present an explanation for the variation in date of enactment of compulsory school attendance legislation. Enactment of compulsory schooling is interpreted in terms of resources committed by states to sustain public schooling for all. Using data drawn from the 1870 Census on populations and occupations, the paper analyzes specific conditions favorable to the commitment of such resources. the interaction of percent of males in agriculture with the ratio of school-age children to adult males is the strongest predictor of date of enactment. The second strongest predictor is the date of formation of State Teachers Associations. These variables, along with the recognition of regional difference, constitute the strongest and most parsimonious explanation for variation in timing of enactment. Their relation to theoretical interpretations of compulsory schooling is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue's paper by Guterman shows that IQ predicts important criterion variables equally well across social class in a predominantly white sample, leading to the conclusion that IQ tests are not socioeconomically biased. The present paper places Guterman`s finding in the context of more general studies concerned with possible racial bias in IQ tests. These studies approach the problem of bias in two major ways, through external validity, like Guterman's and through internal validity, which deals with the detailed behavior of test items themselves. Both kinds of studs' agree in showing that JQ tests are not biased against blacks. In addition, studies of internal validity show that the model of test bias embraced by test critics implies a process of cultural diffusion that is improbable. Questions raised by Guterman concerning the legitimacy of using IQ in stratification research are discussed. Finally, IQ is compared with SES in status attainment models for blacks and whites, where it is shown to play roughly the same role for both races, and to have generally stronger direct effects than SES throughout the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IQ has conic to play an important role in sociological research on stratification. Studies have shown that parental socioeconomic status is modestly related to children's IQ, which, in turn. strongly influences the socioeconomic status attained by the children when they become adults. These studies, however, are open to challenge because they assume that IQ tests are equally valid within different social class categories an assumption that is debatable. The purpose of this paper is to examine the soundness of this assumption. It critically reviews the major arguments offered by those who reject the assumption and contends that these arguments are fallacious. The paper then presents regression analyses bearing on the construct validity of an IQ measure, the Quick Test, within different social class categories. The data come from a national probability sample of 2,213 tenth grade boys. These data support the, hypothesis that the Quick Test is equally valid within the different socioeconomic categories. In conclusion, it seems legitimate for sociologists to use IQ tests in research on stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Sørensen (1974), this paper formulates two models for the process of occupational achievement over time. Unlike Sørensen, this paper considers models which explicitly include the effects of changes in education on changes in occupational achievement; that is, the models do not assume that resources are stable over the career. The first model uses data on educational and occupational attainment at two points in time to examine how changes in education affect the time path of occupation. The model is estimated by the inclusion of an adjustment mechanism in the form of educational aspirations and requires a distributed lag approach. After assuming that the system is "meritocratic," i.e. that changes in educational level translate directly into occupational achievement, the empirical results (based on a French mobility survey) demonstrate the adjustment mechanism quite effectively. The second model assumes simultaneity of effects between education and occupation and allows an estimate of the extent to which the time paths (rates of change over time) of education and occupation are stable. Sørensen found that the growth rate in occupation did not change over time, but the somewhat more complex model used here (again based on French mobility data) suggests that there is a slight increase in rates of change for both education and occupation over time. The results also suggest that the higher the level of one's education, the greater the gain in occupation status over time and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning is, of course, integral to education. Yet the sociology of education has paid little attention to the sociological dimensions of institutionally-engendered student learning processes. Postulating that schools characteristically rely on direct interaction between a teacher and his students as a principal medium for the instigation of student learning, this paper explores the key place of student definitions of such interaction in shaping its actual learning outcomes. Specimen materials from discursive interviews with undergraduates are used to raise and illustrate an array of questions and issues about definitions. The materials suggest that students may not always saliently define the classroom as a learning arena, and indeed, that students can readily define interaction with instructors, when it objectively engenders learning, in terms which take no notice of the learning. These pilot outcomes, though their empirical generalizability must remain at issue, are shown analytically to bear strategic theoretic import, and so are accorded a central expository place in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case made in an earlier paper for extending the Clark-flow typology of college student subcultures to encompass that of the collegiate scholar rested entirely on data collected at a public university. The present paper extends the data base for analysis to show that those originally categorized as collegiate scholars closely resemble in value outlook their counterparts at Ivy League type schools and, in turn, differ markedly in value outlook from lower-class youth found in the fob corps. As such, the findings strengthen the argument for conceiving collegiate scholars to be a distinct subculture on campus rooted in elite traditions which emphasize that the purpose of college is to provide a well-rounded undergraduate experience to prepare students for future roles of leadership in the community or society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data gathered in 1969 through a survey of a large and representative sample of college and university teachers, allow us to begin to map the distribution of research activities in American higher education. This paper addresses itself to three central questions: A) In what kinds of institutions and by what kind of teachers is the bulk of research carried on? B) How is research activity related to research interests, and to other academic responsibilities, especially teaching and university and college administration? C) How is research activity linked to the structure of rewards in different kinds of institutions? The broad aim of this paper is to contribute to the study of the division of academic labor between and within the institutions that make up American higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempted synthesis of the literature on the social organization of schools and the interaction comprising the social process of education. The first part contains over-all pictures of the school as a social environment, taken from the work of Durkheim, Weber, Wailer, and Jackson. These "visions" present the school as a product of its larger social surroundings, and they describe the relationship between the student and teacher roles and the patterns of activities and interaction typical of school life. The second part presents findings from research on the structural and dynamic components of the school: the role structure, the social context and value climate, and the types of exchanges of information, influence, and rewards characteristic of classroom interaction. Part III describes four educational innovations which represent reform based upon the kinds of sociological principles and findings discussed in Parts I and II: the open classroom, a reform school educational program based upon behavior modification techniques, schools-without-walls, and the school in a kibbutz community. The paper concludes with a suggested research agenda oriented toward the development of a real theory of the school as a social environment for learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a framework for the sociological study of formal education, with particular reference to the social history of the United States. After a brief discussion of American interpretations of the role of education in society, the paper focuses on how groups and individuals have shaped and used formal education as part of their efforts to achieve social mobility or maintain positions on the social scene. The social groups which sponsor educational programs, the professional groups which do the teaching, and the students who constitute their clienteles are explored in turn, with special attention to the educational consequences of conflicting social interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of Murray L. Wax on Roger Kahn and William J. Bowers' research paper "The Social Context of the Rank-and-File Student Activist: A Test of Four Hypotheses." Wax doubts whether one can learn anything about real activists by the kind of survey technique employed by Kahn and Bowers, and insofar as Kahn and Bowers are implying that they have performed such "a test of four hypotheses" they are misleading not only the readership of the journal Sociology of Education, but more importantly those who will read elsewhere abstracts or abbreviated versions of their essay. Responding to Wax's comments, Kahn and Bower states that the basic problem with Wax's critique is that it is doctrinaire and superficial. The fact is, of course, that a great deal was learnt about activists through the kind of survey technique employed. The consistent findings being referred to in the introduction of the research paper make this evident. Bowers and Kahn opined that the contributors and readers alike require and deserve more serious, thoughtful criticism and not polemics delivered in the guise of criticism.

A widespread conception of the development of science holds that the great discoveries are a result of the cumulative work of a vast number of scientists. Those historians and philosophers of science who express this point of view see the scientist who produces pedestrian research as an integral part of the developmental process. The great men of science stand atop a pyramid of less distinguished and, to a large extent, invisible scientists. An alternative hypothesis holds that relatively few scientists are responsible for advance in science and that, in the broader historical perspective, most of the eminent scientists, even of the caliber of Nobel laureates and National Academy members of today, are the "pedestrians" of history. This paper attempts to put these conflicting ideas to empirical test for the field of physics. Three independent sets of data are analyzed: one is drawn from a stratified random sample of American academic physicists, a second from a subjective evaluation of significant contributions to recent physics, a third from a set of papers cited in "The Physical Review." All three sets of data indicate that there is a sharp stratification in the use of work published by various types of scientists. The data support the hypothesis that the physicists who produce important discoveries depend almost wholly on the research produced by a relatively small number of scientists. The implications of these findings for the social structure of science are discussed and areas for necessary future research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing data from a seven-year longitudinal study of high school graduates, this paper focuses on the careers of girls who planned to become and/or eventually became elementary and secondary school teachers. The concern of the paper is the way in which factors such as socioeconomic status background, rural-urban residence, measured intelligence, time of occupational choice, level of education, marital status, and husbands' occupational status are related to recruitment to teaching and to retention in the teaching profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Related to an earlier paper on the different faculty conceptions and norms which emerged at a small general education college within a state university, this paper analyzes the actual behavior of faculty members as indicated by: grading, interactions with students outside of class, and selectivity of contacts with students. Differences in faculty styles within two departments--natural sciences and social--sciences are consistent with the differences in beliefs and values. The contrasting ways of relating to students led to different kinds of problems for each department and different resolutions. Data on changes in curriculum are analyzed as responses to these problems. The dilemmas facing the faculty are seen as arising from conflicts between personalism and performance in higher education. The social scientists' emphasis on personalism in their relations with students led to problems centered around the legitimate exercise of faculty authority. The natural scientists' emphasis on performance--as contrasted with the social scientists' personalism--produced pressures for changes in natural science curriculum and grading standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Confucian education and the Victorian-Edwardian Public Schools helped to maintain the identity and political power of an elite, promoting the public service traditions of gentry families which formed the nucleus of that elite. A hinge between traditional loyalties and rationalist organization, Imperial Chinese education, no less than its English counterpart, absorbed and indoctrinated non-elite individual, and strengthened a "two-way link" between public leadership and high social status. This paper describes how the two education systems achieved their effects by promoting an amateur ideal, by morally downgrading commerce and by playing on aesthetic emotion--the "good taste" of the gentleman. The paper develops Joseph Schumpeter's thesis that bourgeoi8 classes do not easily become governing classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the dominance of residentially based school assignment, prior researchers have conceptualized K–12 enrollment decisions as beyond the purview of school actors. This paper questions the continued relevance of this assumption by studying the behavior of guidance counselors charged with implementing New York City’s universal high school choice policy. Drawing on structured interviews with 88 middle school counselors and administrative data on choice outcomes at these middle schools, we find that counselors generally believe lower-income students are on their own in making high school choices and need additional adult support. However, they largely refrain from giving action-guiding advice to students about which schools to attend. We elaborate street-level bureaucracy theory by showing how the majority of counselors reduce cognitive dissonance between their understanding of students’ needs and their inability to meet these needs adequately given existing resources. They do so by drawing selectively on competing policy logics of school choice, narrowly delineating their conception of their role, and relegating decisions to parents. Importantly, we also find departures from the predictions of this theory as approximately one in four counselors sought to meet the needs of individual students by enlarging their role despite the resource constraints they faced. Finally, we quantify the impact of variation in counselors’ approaches, finding that the absence of action-guiding advice is associated with students being admitted to lower-quality schools, on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how public school teachers take up, modify, or resist the dominant ideology of color-blind racism. This examination is based on in-depth interviews with 60 teachers at three segregated schools: one was race/class privileged and two were disadvantaged. Inductive coding revealed that teachers at each school articulated a shared frame to talk about race and class: “legitimated advantage” at Heritage High School, “trickle-down dysfunction” at Bunker High School, and “antiracist dignity” at Solidarity High School. Each represents an inequality frame: a local meaning system that mediates the dominant race/class ideology, arising from teachers’ shared experiences of inequality in the school-as-workplace. The frames I observed responded to three organizational conditions that affected teachers’ experiences of inequality: school demographics, material resources, and professional culture. Variations in these conditions across schools provided opportunity spaces for teachers to either accept race/class domination as common sense or to critique it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising student debt has sparked concerns about its impact on the transition to adulthood. In this paper, we examine the claim that student debt is leading to a rise in "boomeranging," or returning home, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort and discrete time-event history models. We have four findings. First, student loan debt is not associated with boomeranging in the complete sample. However, we find that the association differs by race, such that the link between student debt and returning home is stronger for black than for white youth. Third, degree completion is a strong predictor of returning home, whereby those who fail to attain a degree have an increased risk of boomeranging. Fourth, young adult role transitions and socioeconomic well-being are associated with boomeranging. Findings suggest that rising debt has created new risks and may reproduce social inequalities in the transition to adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a response to James Fennessey and colleagues on their criticism to author's research paper on track system in secondary education and the frustration caused by this system. The author asserts that the main substantive theme of his analysis is quite different from what Fennessey and colleagues picked up, and the main point of the paper, was not evident to the critics. However, the critics misinterpretations are more disturbing for they recur in the other instance where his findings questioned the social processes underlying variables in their own research. The critics report that his analyses omit unnecessarily a large proportion of the possible cases, but they fail to report the reason for his sampling decision. He further says that his study challenges key components of the work of one of these critics. Rather than addressing the real issues that are introduced by his study, the critics seem to want to strike out against the paper by turning it into a straw man, which is not fair at all.

This paper presents the author's opinion on articles about educational sociology in the 2001 issue of Sociology of Education. Carolyn Riehl addresses the multifaceted interdisciplinary conversation around the study of education that marks intellectual life in general at the beginning of the 21st century. Riehl suggests that a critical question for sociology of education now concerns how the field will be defined. If we incorporate too many other disciplinary and substantive perspectives we lose our focus. If we become too skeptical of the theory and scientific-systematic data gathering we risk solipsism. Charles E. Bidwell takes as his central problematic the question of why the technology and structure of schools has remained so static over the century. Bidwell makes no mention of arguments for the critical importance of principals in the effective-schools literature and good deal of the literature on school change both analytical and empirical. In his article Paul W. Kingston argues that the concept of cultural capital has been applied so loosely that it is losing its usefulness. It is completely appropriate to ask whether the culture that schools demand is either arbitrary or exclusionary.

This paper presents the author's opinion on articles about educational stratification and inequalities in the 2001 issue of Sociology of Education. Things look the way they do in the U.S. owing to a school-quality floor that comes with a high standard of living. Different systems of certification involving examinations and licensing are embedded in different systems of schooling and must be understood by means of conceptualizations that respect the systemic context. But to claim that the structure and functioning of an education system is less determinant does not necessarily mean that individuals are freer to choose their own fate or that the stratification system within which that educational system is embedded is less rigid for that reason. In his article, Adam Gamoran alludes to the distinction between school practices that contribute to educational effectiveness and school practices that contribute to educational equality. But even if schools are the second-best option for reform, they at least are an option and we probably know more than is generally appreciated about how to make the education process work better for disadvantaged children. In a sense, effective school reform is an attempt to impose the unnatural and that poses formidable challenges.

Considerable attention has been given to the cultural reproduction of social-class differences in educational settings, but much less attention has been given to the processes by which gender differences are produced and reproduced. The few studies that have examined gender socialization in schools have focused primarily on the role of textbooks and formal instruction in the promotion of traditional gender roles. Since most middle schools and high schools also sponsor extracurricular activities, it is important to determine the role these activities play in the promotion of gender differences in values and behavior. In this paper, we examine the effect of athletic-related activities on the peer-group culture of students at a predominantly working-class middle school. We find that certain extracurricular activities influence the predominant male and female cultures of early adolescents. Since male athletic events are the main social events of the school, both male athletes and female cheerleaders have considerable visibility and are likely to be members of the elite group. Males and females are exposed to very different values through these activities. Male athletes are encouraged to be achievement-oriented and competitive, and cheerleaders are reminded of the importance of appearance and emotion management. These values are incorporated into the informal peer culture of the school, where they are further refined and applied to specific situations and behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the effects of parents' occupational status, teachers' encouragement for further study, and high school curriculum on girls' academic achievement in girls' schools and coeducational schools. Data on high school seniors were collected in two Australian states: Victoria and Queensland. We used multiple regression analysis to identify the most important predictors of year 12 academic success among girls at girls' schools and coed schools. In both states, we found that mother's education was the most important independent predictor of the type of school a girl attended. In one state, attendance at a girls' school was a significant predictor of a girl's exposure to key social influences, her enrollment in a science course in year 12, and her academic achievement. In the other state, however, the sex composition of the school did not affect academic achievement or selected antecedents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that students' opportunities to learn may be stratified both between and within schools: Schools serving a more affluent and able clientele may offer more rigorous and enriched programs of study, and students in college-preparatory curricular programs may have greater access to advanced courses within schools. This notion is tested with a longitudinal, nationally representative sample of public school students from the High School and Beyond data base. The results show few between-school effects of school composition and offerings but important within-school influences of curriculum tracking and coursetaking. In most cases, the difference in achievement between tracks exceeds the difference in achievement between students and dropouts, suggesting that cognitive skill development is affected more by where one is in school than by whether or not one is in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pierre Bourdieu has argued that class position is maintained over time through what he calls strategies of reproduction. But most reproduction theory deals primarily with the effects of schools on the working classes; the role of the dominant classes in the process is seldom studied. The inevitability of change requires that elites adopt and channel innovation to retain control over emerging forms of knowledge. In this paper we examine how private secondary boarding schools and their students have responded to the emergence of microcomputers. Using field data from visits to 48 private secondary boarding schools and survey data from a sample of 2,475 students, we analyze the nature of computer facilities, the frequency of use, and the social attributes of frequent users at such schools. We distinguish between symbolic and instrumental acquisition of cultural capital and consider the implications of our findings for class reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies of the role of curriculum tracking in status maintenance have offered contradictory results, suggesting either that (1) tracking sorts chi Wren from different backgrounds into different curricular programs where they receive differential educational treatments; (2) tracking sorts children on the basis of ability rather than class background, thus facilitating social mobility; or (3) while tracking may sort children, it has little effect upon educational outcomes and thus has no role in status maintenance. This paper uses 1980s data from the High School and Beyond Study to estimate the effects of curriculum tracking over a two-year period on a number of dependent variables for students who have experienced only one track placement. The results show that there are substantial differences among students from different socioeconomic origins in ultimate track destination. Track location is modestly to moderately related to number of courses taken, academic performance, educational and occupational aspirations, satisfaction with school, perceived values of friends, self-esteem, extracurricular participation and leadership, enrollment in postsecondary education, disciplinary climate, and teacher treatment. A reopening of the status maintenance hypothesis is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to clarify the effects of migration on the age-grade progress of children in school. The analysis is based on 3,334 teenagers living in the households sampled in the national 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity. Results support the main hypothesis that the detrimental effect of a move on children's progress in school is a positive function of the cultural difference between the previous and the current places of residence, but only among teenagers with less-educated parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between student misbehavior and academic performance and the effects of family structure and mother's employment on misbehavior and performance. Using panel data on high school sophomores from the High School and Beyond (HSB) survey, we estimate a number of linear panel models. The findings indicate that sophomores with low grades misbehave more as seniors than those with high grades. Academic achievement in the sophomore year has little effect on changes in misbehavior. Misbehavior, however, has negative effects on changes in grades and achievement test scores. Finally, living in a single-parent family and mother's employment negatively affect both achievement and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the origins of state educational systems in Europe in the nineteenth century and the institutionalization of mass education throughout the world in the twentieth century. We offer a theoretical interpretation of mass state-sponsored schooling that emphasizes the role of education in the nation-building efforts of states competing with one another within the European interstate system. We show that political, economic, and cultural developments in Europe led to a model of the legitimate national society that became highly institutionalized in the European (and later, world) cultural frame. This model made the construction of a mass educational system a major and indispensable component of every modern state's activity. We discuss the usefulness of this perspective for understanding recent cross-national studies of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes a qualitative study of family-school relationships in white working-class and middle-class communities. The results indicate that schools have standardized views of the proper role of parents in schooling. Moreover, social class provides parents with unequal resources to comply with teachers' requests for parental participation. Characteristics of family life (e.g., social networks) also intervene and mediate family-school relationships. The social and cultural elements of family life that facilitate compliance with teachers' requests can be viewed as a form of cultural capita!. The study suggests that the concept of cultural capital can be used fruitfully to understand social class differences in children's school experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that previous research has overlooked structural and organizational factors as possible explanations of sex differences in the mathematics achievement of schoolchildren. In particular, we focus on ability grouping as a possible mechanism through which differential opportunities to learn mathematics are presented to males and females and as an instructional practice generating social-psychological processes that differentially affect students by sex. We test the argument on longitudinal data from a larger sample of students in fourth-through sixth-grade classes in both desegregated and segregated schools. The results show that sex is a factor in the assignment of students to ability groups: Males are more likely than females to be assigned to the high-ability group. Nevertheless, the analyses do not reveal an effect of ability-group level on growth in mathematics achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to uncover the mechanisms through which stratification in schools differentiates student achievement. Two types of mechanisms are considered: (1) technical conditions of differentially allocated instruction, and (2) institutional processes operating through symbolically defined categories. Using data from twelve first-grade classrooms, I isolated the instructional effects and found that they are both large and stable. Institutional processes account at most for a small grouping effect, which occurs early in the year but fades as the year progresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between organizational characteristics and earnings differences between male and female faculty from two theoretical perspectives. Two general sets of organization variables are considered: (1) characteristics that index an organization's power and autonomy in environmental relations, and (2) demographic characteristics. Results show that these characteristics define important aspects of the organizational context in which earnings differences between males and females are most likely to occur and to be maintained. The implications of this research for further research on organizational sources of earnings differences are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western advocates of modernization usually assume that school investments will increase the productivity of both the individual and the nation-state. However, sharp criticism continues to be directed toward the human capital model of national development. This theory assumes that schooling operates primarily at the individual level-i.e., that the individual's rational pursuit of material goals drives demand for schooling and that the school imparts technical skills that increase the individual's productivity, as signaled by wages. The alternative institutional mode! of school expansion argues that the spread of literacy and schooling stems from organization-level and ideological processes and that any economic output effects of school expansion should be studied at an aggregate level. First, economic effects may be more related to the changing social rules of trade and work within modernizing economies, which are increasingly oriented around markets and mass production, not village-based subsistence. Second, aggregate analysis avoids the ecological fallacy of estimating nation-level productivity growth from individual-level correlations between school attainment and wage levels. Initial empirical tests of this institutional model show that educational investments have either small or inconsistent economic effects. However, this work has failed to disaggregate the potential effect of educational quality (including literacy levels) from the effect of the quantity of schooling available and to disentangle possible effects among different economic sectors. In this paper, we address these issues as the apply to an early period of commercial expansion in Mexico: 1888 to 1940. We found that variation in educational quality had significant effects on manufacturing output but that school expansion (quantity) had inconsistent effects. Educational quality had less consistent effects on output in commercial agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses career history data from a sample of academic psychologists to examine the extent, patterns, and consequences of interinstitutional job mobility by sex. Though professors have been characterized as mobile, we find relatively low levels of mobility. This mobility does not lead to demotion but often results in moves that are horizontal or out of academia. Changing schools early increases the chances of being on tenure track but later decreases the chances of having tenure-level rank. We find little evidence of barriers to mobility across types of institutions, although we do find that different types of schools offer different rates of promotion. Women change institutions somewhat faster than men, largely because they move faster out of academia, and they gain less from their moves. However, there is little sex difference in variables predicting mobility or outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has concluded that mother`s employment has a small but consistent negative effect on students' reading and mathematics achievement and that this effect is cumulative and proportional to mother's time spent working (Milne et al. 1986, this issue). This paper provides a conceptual and methodological critique of this research and an alternative analysis of the data. We find that respecifying the model to include measures of the structural, attitudinal, and socioeconomic determinants of mother's employment substantially diminishes the effects. The source of the negative effect can be traced to the small number of mothers who worked full-time prior to 1970, before their child entered school. Retrospective reports of mother's labor force participation appear relatively unreliable for this period. Moreover, reformulating the concept of cumulative work experience suggests that significant negative effects exist only for women in the labor force for the shortest period of time or for women who decreased their labor force participation as their child matured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents new research on the effects of mother's employment and living in a one-parent family on children`s achievement. We take advantage of two nationally representative data bases of students from two age groups and demonstrate the importance of model specification to the determination of effects. Results show that mother's employment and living in a one-parent family can have negative effects on school achievement but that these effects differ by age, race, and family structure. The results also demonstrate the importance of mediating variables such as income and time use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a discussion of the contemporary phenomenon of overeducation and underemployment among college graduates. The long-predicted glut of college graduates without college-graduate jobs has been upon us for at least 15 years. However, this "crisis" appears to have had a minimal impact upon American society, and subsequent cohorts of young adults have not reacted to it in a manner consonant with predictions derived from demographic and human capital theory. I argue that our misapprehension of the consequences of the occupational mismatch of college graduates stems from an overemphasis on the traditional role of higher education in both economic production and occupational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the educational attainment experiences of a cohort of young men in the Pacific Northwest between the ages of 16 and 31. The experiences of this cohort reveal that a college degree is the net result of movement through a complex series of steps. We traced the movement of the cohort through these steps and found that completion of a college degree and graduate school attendance required success at every stage in the process. In other words, though early academic success did not assure later success, early academic failure strongly predicted later failure. Rosenbaum (1976) compared this process to a single-elimination tournament. However, unlike Rosenbaum, we found that early academic losers did not abandon educational pursuits but continued to struggle. Education is not a tournament; once out, an individual does not necessarily stay out. At least some unsuccessful students work their way back into the success flow and attain high levels of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To fully comprehend changes in the process of educational attainment in a Society, we must acknowledge changes in the social structure. This paper examines changes in the Dutch educational attainment process over a 25-year period. We compare the attainment levels of two generations of students, those born around 1940 and those born around 1965. The analysis is conducted in two stages. In the first stage, we use a variant of multiple correspondence analysis to determine whether changes in the Dutch systems of labor, welfare, and education have affected levels of attainment. In the second stage, we measure changes in the attainment process using a simple version of the Wisconsin model. Results of the first analysis show that changes in Dutch society have affected the educational attainment of certain groups. For example, the modernization of agriculture has had a positive effect on the attainment of farmer's children, and the extension of the welfare system has had a negative effect on the attainment of children from welfare families. The results of the second analysis show that there has been considerable change in the attainment process. The effect of achievement score on selection into secondary school has increased, and the effects of sex and residence have decreased. However, this increase in meritocratic selection has been offset by an increase in the effect of social class on achievement score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a quantitative case study of the differences in academic behavior between public- and Catholic-school students. Using numerous measures of behavior, attitudes, and perceptions. I found that Catholic-school students differed from public-school students only in behavior that could be directly influenced by school practice: The Catholic-school students skipped school less often and spent more time on homework despite their greater nonconformity to other expectations. A school-effects model is more successful than competing models in predicting such specific differences. Prior-socialization, motivation, and parental-constraint models imply differences in a wide range of behaviors and attitudes. The most parsimonious explanation of the pattern of findings presented here is that academic differences between public- and Catholic-school students are due to the greater discipline and more rigorous requirements in the Catholic schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When researchers investigate how school policies, practices, or climates affect student outcomes, they use multilevel, hierarchical data. Though methodologists have consistently warned of the formidable inferential problems such data pose for traditional statistical methods, no comprehensive alternative analytic strategy has been available. This paper presents a general statistical methodology for such hierarchically structured data and illustrates its use by reexamining the High School and Beyond data and the controversy over the effectiveness of public and Catholic schools. The model enables the researcher to utilize mean achievement and certain structural parameters that characterize the equity in the social distribution of achievement as multivariate outcomes for each school. Variation in these school-level outcomes is then explained as a function of school characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]