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In some American schools, about a fifth of the fathers have spent time in prison during their child’s primary education. We examine how variation across schools in the aggregation and concentration of the mass imprisonment of fathers is associated with their own children’s intergenerational educational outcomes and “spills over” into the attainments of other students. We assess the association of this interinstitutional and intergenerational “prison through school pathway” with downward and blocked educational achievement. Educational and economic resources and other predisposing variables partially explain school-linked effects of paternal imprisonment on measures of children’s educational outcomes. However, we find that the net negative school-level association of paternal imprisonment with educational outcomes persists even after we introduce school- and individual-level measures of a wide range of mediating processes and extraneous control variables. We discuss paternal imprisonment as a form of “marked absence.” The significance of elevated levels of paternal imprisonment in schools is perhaps most apparent in its negative association with college completion, the educational divide that now most dramatically disadvantages individuals and groups in American society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using data gleaned from catalogs and bulletins for a sample of 28 tribal, 33 historically black, and 30 "mainstream" colleges, the author analyzes the number of courses that focus explicitly and exclusively on African American or American Indian cultural perspectives—"ethnocentric" content—in 1992 and 2002. Negative binomial regression analyses of course counts indicate that tribal colleges offer nearly 10 times as many "ethnocentric" courses as mainstream colleges, net of other institutional characteristics (e.g., minority enrollment, public or private control, two- or four-year college, and accreditation). This finding could be attributed to the quasi-sovereign legal status of Indian tribes, which, like other sovereigns, are invested with the authority to define what counts as legitimate knowledge. Compared with mainstream institutions, privately controlled black colleges offer approximately 15 percent more, and publicly controlled black colleges offer 73 percent fewer, Afrocentric courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the educational enrollment of immigrants has typically asserted that today's immigrant children are educationally disadvantaged and that earlier waves of immigrants were more readily absorbed into the American educational system. This article addresses these assumptions, drawing on traditional assimilationist and status competition approaches to racial and ethnic stratification. Data from the 1920 IPUMS census database are used to analyze the school participation of 15 to 18 year olds who were living in their parents' homes. The findings demonstrate that the process of assimilation was not uniform for all groups. Some groups achieved parity with the native stock by the third generation, and others took at least an additional generation or experienced declines in the proportions who were enrolled in school. In general, the results suggest strong parallels between the educational experiences of white ethnic youths in 1920 and those of today's immigrant youths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

in this article, the authors test a "frog-pond" model of elite college admission proposed by Attewell, operationalizing high school academic context as the secondary school-average SAT score and number of Advanced Placement tests per high school senior. Data on more than 45,000 applications to three elite universities show that a high school's academic environment has a negative effect on college admission, controlling for individual students' scholastic ability. A given applicant's chances of being accepted are reduced if he or she comes from a high school with relatively more highly talented students, that is, if the applicant is a small frog in a big pond. Direct evidence on high school class rank produces similar findings. A school's reputation or prestige has a counterbalancing positive effect on college admission. Institutional gatekeepers are susceptible to context effects, but the influence of school variables is small relative to the characteristics of individual students. The authors tie the findings to prior work on meritocracy in college admission and to the role played by elite education in promoting opportunity or reproducing inequality, and they speculate on the applicability of frog-pond models in areas beyond elite college admission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes how categories from the curriculum can play a central role in the interactional construction of students' identities. Drawing on data from one ninth-grade English and history class across an academic year, the article describes an adolescent who was assigned and came to enact the identity of a disruptive outcast from the classroom community. It then describes how this student's identity development was facilitated by discussions of a curricular theme. The article traces the student's trajectory across the year and then analyzes one classroom discussion in detail, showing the interactional construction of her alienation from school and how this construction was mediated through curricular categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the effects of cultural capital on the educational success of male and female students have reached contradictory conclusions, and few studies have considered the role that habitus plays in educational outcomes. This article analyzes the cultural participation of eighth-grade boys and girls and presents a model that includes a measure for habitus. Through a detailed analysis of cultural practices that have typically been grouped together as a single scale, the author found that female and higher-SES students are more likely to participate in cultural activities. In addition, in both standard ordinary least squares and fixed school-effects models, she found that cultural capital has a positive, significant effect on the grades of female students, both with and without controlling for Bourdieu's notion of habitus. For male students, the effect is weaker and present only in the fixed-effects models. Habitus itself has a strong effect for both male and female students in all models. The author argues that traditional gender stereotypes play a role in the lack of cultural participation by male students and that female students may be more encouraged to make use of their cultural capital to succeed in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study shows that gaps between opportunities to learn and students' appropriation of those opportunities are instructionally produced and socially distributed via mechanisms that affect engagement and lead to alienation from instruction--the dissociation between students' physical presence in academic classes and their thoughts while in class. Using an innovative approach to measuring engagement and different types of alienation from instruction, the study found that students are alienated from instruction almost half the time and that when they are alienated, they tend to be preoccupied with external issues. Instructional characteristics and external contexts exhibit a tug-of-war over students' engagement and alienation from instruction. In relation to teacher-centered lectures, progressive instructional strategies and methods are better able to insulate students from alienating environments, whereas boring and nonrelevant instruction allows external preoccupations to swamp students' attention, especially among Hispanic and African American students and those who are at risk of alienation from instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative problem solving in classrooms may be influenced by the social status of the members of problem-solving groups. One mechanism by which it may occur is the politeness of the members' criticisms of one other. During group problem solving, high-status students may be perceived as strong leaders, but their high status could interfere with group problem solving by biasing other students' evaluations of the correctness of their actions during the problem-solving task. Similarly, polite students may be judged weak leaders, but politeness may facilitate group problem solving. These hypotheses were tested in a study of 80 high school students who were videotaped while attempting to solve a difficult algebra problem in groups during class. The students also completed questionnaires about their social status before the task and, after the task, about who they saw as leaders in their groups. Four dimensions of status were analyzed: academic, peer friendship, gender, and ethnicity. Time results suggest a conflict between a task focus and a social relationship focus in classroom activities and the possible value of politeness as a measure of group social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the prestige of the Coleman Report, few sociologists of education assert that school spending is associated with students' achievement. Instead, most either emphasize the influence of school social environment or question the ability of schools to make any difference. The study presented here applied LISREL to a new database synthesized from the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress in mathematics for eighth graders and the Common Core of Data for the universe of U.S. school districts to test the hypothesis that school spending is associated with achievement. It found that per-pupil expenditures for instruction and the administration of school districts are associated with achievement because both result in reduced class size, which raises achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using longitudinal data from the Beginning School Study (BSS), the study reported here examined sources of influence on inner-city students' initial middle school placements in English and mathematics and continuity and change in placements through the end of middle school. The study found that test scores and prior retention in grade exert strong effects at the transition into middle school, but so do social background and parents' educational expectations, particularly for higher-level placements. Stability in middle school placements is strong, and neither social background nor educational expectations consistently influences eighth-grade course levels, net of sixth-grade placements and other predictors in the model. The authors conclude that educational trajectories are not grounded in academic considerations alone, but the contributions of nonacademic factors on track placements toward the end of middle school are obscured if the determinants of earlier placements are not included in the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is divided into three parts to show separate but related developments in the new generation of research on school effectiveness. The first part presents a historical overview of the development of this research from a narrow individualistic input-out approach to a more holistic approach that evaluates within-school processes. The second part reviews two competing theories of school effectiveness and the search for an appropriate analytic model. The third part describes a new way of analyzing hierarchically nested data by using a large data set of students from the different types of Dutch secondary schools and a statistical tool suited to analyzing the effects of selection policies in these schools. The results are compared with those of studies of the British and U.S. school systems. The author concludes that selective schools produce better results than do nonselective schools. Although the cause of this effect is not clear, the data support the hypothesis that the selection processes create a stimulating school climate, which, in turn, motivates students to achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines two aspects of the practice of tracking students for instruction in the middle school: the structure of a tracking system and the process of assigning students to track levels. Relying on existing conceptualizations of track formation and assignment, it argues that certain aspects of tracking are primarily a response to organizational constraints within a school and are not governed solely by students' learning needs. Analyses of longitudinal data on 1,669 students in several middle schools reveal that the number; stability; and, to some extent, the size of tracks are determined independently of characteristics of the student population distribution. Students' assignments to tracks are strongly influenced by their track history, as well as by prior achievement, and there is a modest independent influence of select background characteristics. Inequities associated with these features of tracking are discussed and policy changes are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The managerial perspective of classroom control tends to view deviant students as detrimental to the quality of classroom instruction and as problematic for the maintenance of order in the classroom. From a collective-resource perspective, however, deviant students may be a valuable asset in the maintenance of classroom order. This article outlines a collective-resource perspective and illustrates the usefulness of this perspective with data from a case study and a study of 96 first-grade classrooms. Implications of the collective-resource perspective for research on deviant students and classroom control are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from a sample of Australian students are used to estimate differences in the academic achievement of and the completion of secondary school by youths from Australian, English, Greek, and Italian backgrounds. The effects of ethnicity are relatively small, but there are important differences between the ethnic groups. Greek and Italian students have lower academic achievement than do Australian and English students, the social psychological support they receive for education is higher, and substantially more Greek and Italian students complete secondary school. These results do not support the argument that the upward mobility of non-English-speaking immigrant students is blocked in the educational system. Rather, it seems that the achievement of these students is limited because of their lack of proficiency in English, while their success is facilitated by their cultural values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has investigated a wide range of factors associated with dropout behavior, including family-related factors. However, most investigations of family-related factors have relied on structural measures, such as socioeconomic status, parental education and family income. Such measures reveal little about the processes by which families influence students' achievement. This study explores in greater detail a series of variables that reveal some of the mechanisms by which families influence students' decisions to drop out of school. The results suggest that families exert an important influence on dropout behavior, just as they do on other measures of students' academic achievement. Compared to other students, even other students who have similar demographic and grade profiles, dropouts are more likely to come from families in which they have to make decisions on their own and in which their parents are less involved in their education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offering a general model for predicting the social demand for college education, human capital theory imputes students' aggregate costs and benefits to post secondary study. This article questions the applicability of that model in the Third World. The author's study of 3,200 graduating secondary school students in 45 schools in Peru found that no one set of factors explains the decision to seek entrance to a university. Instead, the reasons for college going differ among groups, depending on gender, ethnicity, social class and urban or rural residence. To the extent that this heterogeneity of choice occurs in other nations, the findings thus indicate a need to reappraise the utility of human capital theory for understanding social demand. The findings also suggest the inherent limits of any nation's ability to mold public demand through centralized state planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the impact of cultural consumption on the educational aspirations of Australian secondary school students, taking into account other factors, such as the students' social origin and the type of school they attend. The analysis indicates that cultural consumption is a significant source of differentiation among boys' plans to obtain a higher education but has less of an impact on girls' plans. However, girls' plans are less discriminating than are boys , since many more girls than boys plan to obtain a higher education. This gender difference suggests that efforts to explain the variation in educational aspirations need to be sensitive to the different structural locations of the two sexes in senior high school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effects of a number of factors on the dropout behavior of high school students drawn from the base year and first followup of High School and Beyond. The author found that cutting classes, suspensions, dating, being older, and being female substantially increased the odds of Chicano students dropping out. Among Cuban students, suspensions increased the odds of dropping out, but having disciplinary problems at school, high socioeconomic status, and having two parents at home substantially decreased them. For Puerto Rican students, cutting classes, suspension, being older, and being female increased the odds, but having two parents at home decreased them. Intra-Hispanic differences in the effects of immigration on school attrition were also observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boarding schools are complex institutions that encompass many spheres of life and subunits, each characterized by different modes of conduct, or "codes." They may be classified on the basis of the intensity of each code and the patterns that link the codes in each institution. Six types of boarding schools are delineated in this article. The ideal, hybrid type maximizes the pedagogical potential because it is based on the fusion of codes and the institutionalization of conflict among them. Consequently, it provides students with a high degree of freedom and the opportunity to experiment with various kinds of roles and rules and fosters the emergence of a commitment to universal values and responsible elite orientations. Examples are given from Israel, Britain, and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the transcripts of 1,700 students who entered four high schools as ninth graders in fall 1979, we estimated the influence of students' background characteristics on course placement in mathematics and science. After controlling for the students' background characteristics, we found that course-placement probabilities differ substantially across the four schools. Furthermore, the pattern of association between course placement in mathematics and in science differs in important ways from school to school. These differences in course placement can be explained, in part, by the organization of the curricula at the four schools and, in part, by the composition of the student populations in the schools. The results suggest that stratification in high schools is a dual process in which positions in the curriculum (courses or sections) are created and students are matched with positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the impact of school desegregation programs on public school enrolment of white students between the period 1968-76. In July 1985 issue of the journal "Sociology of Education" published some central issues surrounding responses to desegregation programs in public schools which were written by sociologist Franklin Wilson. A finding that the losses are temporary and result only from increased interracial contact says, in effect, that the design of programs is unimportant and that the costs of integration are transitory. In contrast, a finding that the losses are permanent and that the losses resulting from mandatory reassignment are larger than those that accompany voluntary programs highlights the need for a careful program design. An important feature of Wilson's article is that it is one of the few attempts to assess the timing of the enrollment response of white students to desegregation plans and to condition enrollment responses on the features of plans.

Schools produce multiple outputs, most obviously, the achievement of students in different subject areas. This article reports on a study of the differences between two academic subjects and the consequences of this differentiation for educational production functions. in examining the achievement of Greek ninth-grade students in physics and literature, I found that the influence of the students' background and of the inputs of the schools differed systematically as the achievement context changed and that it conformed to hypotheses on salient epistemic and exogenous differences between academic subjects. Particular features of Greek society and of the Greek educational system that are pertinent to the observed results are included as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collins's and Bourdieu's conflict theories of educational stratification are elaborated into two testable hypotheses. One hypothesis states that the effects of parents' financial resources on children's educational attainment have decreased; the other states that the effects of parents' cultural resources have increased. I estimate linear structural models in which the educational attainment of the two oldest siblings in a family is predicted by social background and by indicators of parents' financial and cultural resources. Cohort comparisons show that the influence of financial resources has disappeared since 1950 and that the influence of cultural resources, which was small before 1950, became even smaller after 1950. The association between parents' participation in high culture and children's educational attainment proves to be spurious. [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]

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]

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]

The development of self-esteem and self-confidence is necessary for students to feel good about themselves. Studies of schooling process use the concept of ideology in a number of ways. Most often, ideology is defined as a system of beliefs and practices passed on by educational organizations, which perpetuate a class-based society. To study ideology and its practical accomplishments in education is to study education in process. This investigation, which belongs to the critical ethnography genre, attempts to untangle the complex relationship between educational practice and sociocultural production and reproduction. The study presented in this article was conducted in three schools of choice located in a medium-size community on the West Coast. The schools, one public and two private, shared many characteristics but also differed along certain dimensions. They shared a commitment to the development of student self-esteem through the promotion of choice and involvement in school activities. But they differed in the specific manner in which that goal was achieved in the school's daily routine.

This study looks at contextual effects within the elementary classroom by examining the extent to which students' ability group assignments affect their rate of becoming inattentive. The data include behavioral measures of attentiveness obtained from 16 video-taped lessons of first grade reading groups. These data were analyzed using a continuous-time, stochastic model in which the dependent variable is an instantaneous rate of change from the state of attention to the state of inattention. Assignment to a low ability group was found to have a strong negative effect on student attentiveness, controlling for individual characteristics and previous individual inattention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of the effects of classroom characteristics on educational outcomes have been concerned primarily with cognitive outcomes, such as academic achievement. In this paper we examine effects of classroom variables on children's social development. We argue that the way teachers group students for instructional purposes and their pedagogical techniques affect children's proximity and similarity within the classroom, and that these in turn affect their interpersonal relationships. We use longitudinal data from fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children to test several hypotheses predicting influences of instructional organization on the formation and stability of children's friendships. The findings provide evidence that selected classroom variables have a positive impact on the stability of children's existing friendships and on the likelihood that children become more friendly. The results also indicate that weak friendships are more easily influenced by classroom characteristics than close friendships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers studying Rumanian immigrants to Israel and Moroccan immigrants to France and Israel, concluded that for acculturation there seems to be a vulnerable age during childhood or adolescence. During that period modifications in the cultural context of children seem to have severe consequences for their further development. In a study on children of immigrants from South and South-East Europe to the Federal Republic of Germany authors noticed that adaptation is influenced, among other factors, by the age of the child at the time of immigration. Findings of authors, however, are serendipitous, since the full significance of the child's age at the time of immigration became apparent only ex post factum. Authors have data available on only 134 immigrant children in regular classes of German primary and general schools in the heavily industrialized West of Germany. In a hierarchy of three different types of secondary schools, general secondary schools are the least prestigious type of school. Admission processes for the more prestigious types of school take place after four years of primary school, that is, at the age of ten.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for the analysis of school effects on learning. A differential equation model for change in academic achievement is derived from the conceptual framework. Numerous implications for the evaluation of existing research are derived and preliminary analysis using the proposed model is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper replicates in several ways an analysis carried out by Wiley and Harnischfeger on the effects of quantity of schooling on achievement. In contrast to their findings, the replications do not conclude that quantity of schooling, as they operationalize it, is of great practical importance for achievement. This conclusion is not pressed very far because specific additional factors must be incorporated before firm conclusions regarding the effect of quantity of schooling are possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies of the effects of college selectivity on undergraduate aspirations, data both on educational aspirations and on career-field choice have been reported as relevant. Aspirations and career-field choice should not be treated as interchangeable measures, because college selectivity has a different effect on each. Selective colleges reinforce preferences for educationally high level careers within each field, thereby increasing the desirability of career fields with lower overall educational levels, for reasons other than effects on aspirations. Support for this hypothesis is found in a reexamination of two previous studies and in a secondary analysis of data on aspirations and career-field choices of science freshmen. The negative net effect of college selectivity on career-field choice is not really a "relative deprivation" effect, as previously argued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central hypotheses of this study were developed to test the assertion that adolescents maintain a separate and distinct set of values and norms from adults on a number of dimensions. The dimensions on which the adults and adolescents were assumed to differ were derived from a review of the works of Parsons, Eisenstadt, Bronfenbrenner, Coleman, and England. From a review of these authors' works, nine situational dilemma questions were derived, the answer: to which were expected to differ between high-school students and their teacher:. An index was constructed using five of the situational dilemma dimensions and this index was found to distinguish between student and teacher value systems. The effects of several other factors on index scores were also examined including: grade of students, sex of students and teachers, race of students, and the number of years teachers had been teaching at the school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to determine the relative importance of institutional vs. situational perspectives in influencing faculty perceptions of the academic environment, Institutional Functioning Inventory responses were obtained from representative samples of faculty, students and administrators at a diverse cross-section of American colleges. Though administrators tended to have more favorable views than those of the students or faculty members, the evidence strongly suggests the presence of one generally-perceived environment, rather than a series of sub-environments dependent upon group membership. Furthermore, faculty views seemed to be relatively independent of various faculty situational variables, such as academic rank, teaching load, and academic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in salaries among academic institutions are the most important factor governing the formal qualifications of their faculties. But independent of these material rewards, the intrinsic rewards provided by specialized and advanced academic work also facilitate recruitment of well qualified faculties, and so does the academic tradition that has developed in older institutions. Most conditions that help recruiting qualified faculties also attract highly able students to a college or university. Thus large institutions have better faculties and better students than small ones, because both groups seem to be attracted by several conditions found mostly in large institutions, such as many specialized departments creating a diverse academic environment. Large size as such, however, independent of the attractive features associated with it, impedes both faculty and student recruitment, probably owing to the greater impersonality and bureaucratization of large academic institutions. Particularistic preferences are implied by the findings that Southern institutions recruit better faculties than their low salaries would lead one to expect and that religious institutions attract better students than their academic quality warrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of educational performance omit consideration of the influence of regional cultures. It can be shown that on both minimal and higher educational levels historically determined regional cultures continue to have significant influence in this country. The data on the relation of educational performance to regional cultures both confirm and supplement the evidence for the overriding influence of microcultural data in determining outcomes in the studies of Coleman and Astin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By comparing data on social backgrounds of students in their final year of secondary school, the value of desegregating school system to the level of individual schools is evident. Patterns of selectivity, overall and by type of school, are found to be different for each of the three cities studied. The data support the idea that increasing access to the school system is not necessarily the same as "democratizing," access to schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An investigation was made of the home environments of small samples of 1968-1970 kindergarten students in a high-achieving parochial elementary school and in a nearby public school. Both schools were located in the inner-city area of a large midwestern city. Using the Dave-Wolf Home Environment Interview Schedule, evidence was found that students in the parochial school sample had more supportive home environments than did students in the public school sample, particularly with respect to language usage and intellectual aspirations and expectations. These aspects (sub-scales) of home environment also correlated highly with scores on reading readiness tests administered at the end of kindergarten. The results suggested that the more supportive home environments of the parochial school pupils may have been primarily responsible for their relatively higher academic achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rosenthal and Jacobson found that a teacher's expectations about a child's behavior strongly influence his actual behavior. Generally, teachers form their first impressions of children, and thus develop their expectations for them, from two sources of information the children's school record and their physical appearance. In this experiment, teachers were given objective information, presumably about a child's scholastic and social potential, accompanied by a photograph of an attractive or an unattractive boy or girl. It was found that the child's attractiveness was significantly associated with the teacher's expectations about how intelligent the child was, how interested in education his parents were, how far he was likely to progress in school, and how popular he would be with his peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three questions regarding the secondary school guidance counselor are addressed: (1) Do counselors devote more time to students predisposed than to students less predisposed toward higher education? (2) To what extent does the counselor's advice depend upon such variables as a student's status, intelligence, educational expectations, and encouragement from parents? (3) Does the counselor have an effect on a student's educational expectations independent of the effects of these variables? Correlational and path analyses with longitudinal data from 1171 males and 1105 females surveyed at the end of their freshman and sophomore high school years revealed that: (1) counselors have more educational contacts with students less disposed toward higher education; (2) the student's educational goals and intelligence exert a direct effect on the educational advice accorded him by the counselor, but virtually all of the effect of status on such advice is indirect; and (3) the counselor has an incremental effect on the student's educational expectations independent of the influences of the predisposing variables included in the analysis. Moreover, a student's "early" educational expectations appear to have a critical effect on his subsequent expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sociology of higher education has emerged in the quarter-century since World War II. It is now a field with several important streams of interest: the two major foci of educational inequality beyond the secondary level and the social-psychological effects of college on students; and smaller literatures on the academic profession and governance and organization. In the 1970s, some parts of the field face the danger of expensive trivialization, others of substituting playful journalism for scholarly discipline. Encouraging prospects for the near future include more extensive development of comparative studies and analyses with historical depth. A useful additional step would be to counter the dominant instrumental definitions of education with approaches that center on the values, traditions, and identities--the expressive components--of educational social systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Left-of-center criticism has emphasized the ties of the university to the industrial, war-making establishment and the consequent weakening of the university's role as remote, objective critic. But even when the university does function as a liberal ivory tower, it serves the societal elite as importantly as when it offers expertise and personnel to the industrial machine. The traditions of remoteness and scholarship make the university particularly effective in providing legitimation for the ongoing system of status inequalities. It is this service, grounded in the "objective" screening of students, that has brought the university into conflict with minority youth. The 1968 strike at San Francisco State College provides, an example of the development of this conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of a school system was undertaken to replicate, partially, Coleman's research and critically evaluate the subcultural model he used. Using Parsons' distinction between instrumental and integrative roles, students chose desired characteristics of leaders for each type of school role. The characteristics were divided into instrumental and integrative; the hypothesis being that each type of characteristic would be selected for the appropriate type of role. Findings indicate that, contrary to Coleman, students selected instrumental characteristics for both instrumental and integrative roles. These findings raise doubts about the utility of the sub-cultural model for understanding adolescent roles and social organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative predictive value of data on marijuana use, student types, and more conventional background traits on a number of dependent variables of interest to researchers of student culture. Data on 344 college students (62 percent of whom have smoked marijuana) indicate that drug use is a sensitive independent variable which may rove fruitful in much needed educational research on an important subcultural student movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of male students of the graduating class of 1965 in a selective university shows that occupational choices undergo considerable change during the undergraduate years. Although gross overall changes in the occupational profile of the class are not large, many students are discouraged from pursuing careers which require extensive academic training when they receive low grades, even though all who are admitted appear to be capable of entering such careers. Students initially selecting engineering as a career defect in large numbers-20 percent planning careers in the field at the outset, and only seven percent at graduation. On the other hand, only seven percent of entering students initially plan business careers, while 21 percent graduate with plans to enter business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the collective conceptions and norms which developed on the faculty at a newly founded small college of general education in a state university. Conception of students, educational objectives, norms regarding student-faculty relations, and conceptions of effects on students are the four major areas examined. Sharp differences among faculty members emerged early in the history of the College. These differences crystallized into belief systems based in the two dominant departments, the natural sciences and social sciences. The natural science orientation was predominantly "utilitarian": it emphasized cognitive effects on students, was unconcerned about developing high student commitment to the College, and encouraged faculty to maintain, some distance from students. The social science orientation was "normative": faculty were to "reach" students personally as well as intellectually, encourage high student commitment, and promote close, egalitarian relationships with students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduation from college is treated here as the crucial dependent variable. We know a great deal about why a student leaves the institution of first registration, but why he leaves and other factors associated with his early separation may have little connection with his later academic career. This study will demonstrate the need for an inter-institutional approach which allows for the delayed graduation of the dropouts who come back and the students who transfer. Such an approach, in this case a ten-year follow-up, obtains results quite different from past studies with respect to the relevance of certain predictors of college graduation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets forth suggestions as to the types of variables which are significant for interpreting the direct action undertaken by students in Mexico and Colombia in order to influence affairs in their universities and on the larger political scene. It is hypothesized that student behavior may be partly explained by inconsistencies between the image of the "student role' on the one hand, and actual experience in attempting to realize that image, both at the university and after graduation. Hypotheses are also set forth as to why, when student direct action is taken, it is not strenuously opposed by university authorities, public officials, or the public generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]