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This paper address the question whether ethnic diversity in school classes in the context of major cities and metropolises, where children from an early age grew up with the phenomenon of ethnic diversity, has a positive effect on the educational performance of migrant pupils, taking the ethnic composition of those classes into account? We use crossnational PISA 2006 data with 8,521 immigrant students from 35 different countries of origin, living in 15 Western destination countries, and all 72,329 native students in these 15 Western countries. We control for a large number of individual (SES, origin, generation) and school characteristics (SES composition, % migrant pupils, school educational resources). Native students and students with an immigrant background have been analyzed separately, using a multilevel analysis with four levels: students, schools, regions and countries. We find that the effect of school ethnic diversity outside cities is quite negative on the educational performance of 15-year-old migrant and native pupils. In cities the effect of school ethnic diversity is smaller but still negative for both migrant and native pupils. But in large cities the effect of school ethnic diversity on educational performance is positive for both migrant and native pupils. This result fits with our hypothesis is that ethnic diversity in schools can have a positive effect on the educational performance of migrant students, but only in the context of a multi-ethnic metropolis. This result also supports the optimistic tone of the last section final section of Putnam's article. Within a context in which ethnic diversity has become a "normal" phenomenon from birth on, this optimistic expectation for the future of Putnam could indeed become true. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Robert Putnam (2007) ethnic diversity in cities and neighborhoods does not lead to an increase of trust and social capital as previously predicted by intergroup contact theory (Pettigrew, 1998); instead it triggers a reaction of hunkering down that leads to a decrease in trust and social capital of both in-group and out-groups. But what happens if we focus on youngsters that are growing up in a multi-ethnic metropole, that are considering ethnic diversity as a something "normal", and that are bridging their ethnic differences by sharing a common street culture and language? In this article we use data about 905 pupils, 41 classes and 11 schools in a European metropole to confirm the hypothesis that in this specific context ethnic diversity in classrooms does lead to positive effects on educational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the scientific literacy of immigrant children in a cross-classified multilevel framework. Using data from the 2006 PISA survey, features of immigrant children's countries of origin, countries of destination, and communities (the specific origin-destination combination) are taken into account in order to explain macro-level differences in immigrants' educational performance. Our sample consists of 9414 15-year-old immigrant children, originating from 46 different countries, living in 16 Western countries of destination. Results show that differences in scientific performance between immigrant children from different origins and between children living in different countries of destination cannot be fully explained by compositional differences. Contextual attributes of origin countries, destination countries, and communities matter as well. It is for instance shown that the better educational performance of immigrant children living in traditional immigration receiving countries cannot be explained by these children's favourable background characteristics. The political and economic features of the origin countries did not influence the science performance, in contrast with the origin countries' prevailing religions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goode (1962) argues that at the start of modern society the upper classes will have higher divorce rates, but as divorce procedures are gradually made available to all classes this differences will dwindle away. Since family strain towards the lower strata is greater, the proportion of lower strata divorces will increase, and eventually Goode expects an inverse relation between class and divorce rate. The partly contradicting results on this relation between class and divorce risk ask for a more systematic, cross-national and cross-cohort analysis of the relation between education and divorce and separation. This will be the first aim of this paper. We use multi-level analysis to analyze this relation in various countries in Europe and the USA. We analyze this relation for both all unions (whatever their juridical form) and for the married couples only (with or without cohabitation). The second aim of this paper is to explain these cross-national and cross-cohort differences in the relation between education and divorce/separation by (changes in) state regulations of marriage and divorce, social policies, the level of female full time labor market participation and the general acceptance of divorce. We use the files of the Fertility and Family Survey project. These data were collected during the 1990s. They are national representative samples of male and female respondents in Finland, Poland, Estonia, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, West Germany, Sweden, USA and Greece. Final results will be presented at the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address with the 2012 wave of the international PISA data, measuring performance and background of 15-years-old pupils in all OECD countries to unravel the mechanisms behind the negative influence of single parenthood and the proportion of single-parent families on school performances. We find that pupils living in a single-mother family do not perform significantly worse than other pupils, but only if we control for individual truancy. The school-level measure of classroom disruption and truancy mediate some of the negative effect of the school's concentration of students from single-parent families on individual students' math performance. However, the school's percentage of single-parent families remains significantly negative on individual performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I estimate the effects on language skills of two characteristics of school populations: average/share and diversity, both on the ethnic and the sociocultural dimension. I use the cross-national PISA 206 data, for both 15-year-old native pupils and pupils with an immigrant background. A larger ethnic diversity of schools in secondary education hampers the educational performance of both pupils with an immigrant background and native pupils, but the negative effects are smaller in education systems with little stratification and strongest in highly stratified education systems. The sociocultural diversity of schools does not have an effect on educational performance, but these effects are positive in highly stratified educational systems and negative in hardly stratified systems. However, the average parental educational level of schools is very important for the educational performance of children, and this hardly differs between education systems. A higher share of pupils with an immigrant background in a school hampers educational performance, but if these pupils have the same regional origin (Islamic countries; non-Islamic Asian countries), a higher share of pupils with an immigrant background at that school promotes educational performance. Pupils originating from Islamic countries have substantially lower language scores than equivalent pupils with an immigrant background from other regions. This cannot be explained by the individual socioeconomic backgrounds, school characteristics, or education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]