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Chetty et al. (2022) say county density of cross-class friendships (referred to here as "adult-bridging capital") has causal impacts on social mobility within the United States. We instead find that social mobility rates are a function of county density of family capital (higher marriage rates and two-person households), community capital (community organizations, religious congregations, and volunteering), and mean student achievement in grades 3-8. Our models use similar multiple regression equations and the same variables employed by Chetty et al. but also include state fixed effects, student achievement, and family, community, schoolbridging (cross-class high school friendships), and political (participation and institutional trust) capital. School-bridging capital is weakly correlated with mobility if adult-bridging is excluded from the model. R-squared barely changes when adult-bridging is incorporated into the model. When it is included, mobility continues to be significantly correlated with the achievement, family, and community variables but not with school-bridging and political ones. We infer that county mobility rates are largely shaped by parental presence, community life, and student achievement. To enhance mobility, public policy needs to enhance the lives of disadvantaged people at home, in school, and in communities, not just the social class of their friendships.

In assessing the current and future role of universities in the nation-states in which they are chartered and funded, it is useful to ask, When are universities societal leaders as societal and constructive change agents, and when are they followers, reinforcing the existing political order? As discussed in the book, "Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats and the Future of Higher Education," the national political history and contemporary context is the dominant factor for shaping the leadership or follower role of universities -- what I call a political determinist interpretation. We often think of contemporary universities, and their students and faculty, as catalysts for societal progress -- the Free Speech and Civil Rights movements, Vietnam War protests, the anti-Apartheid movement, Tiananmen Square, and more recently the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. Universities can be, and have been, the locus for not only educating enlightened future leaders, but also for opposing oppression and dictatorships. But universities have also proved over their history to be tools for serving the privileged, and reinforcing the social class divisions of a society; they also have been factories for errant theories that reinforce the worst of nationalist tendencies. Universities are both unique environments for educating and mentoring free thinkers, entrepreneurs, and citizens with, for example, a devotion to social change, or for creating conformists -- or all of the above. How might we assess whether universities are followers or leaders in their societies? This essay considers this question, offering a framework for evaluating the follower or leader role, and with particular attention to the emergence or, in some cases, re-emergence of neonationalist leaders and autocratic governments.

Past research demonstrates the degree to which extracurricular activities, paid work, and major family responsibilities impinge on student academic trajectories. Largely absent from this body of work is consideration of the ways in which schools and teachers mitigate the adverse consequences of out-of-school obligations and choices on academic outcomes. In this paper, we seek to understand when, and for whom, teachers and administrators exercise their power to accommodate students' out-of-school time commitments. Analyzing 61 interviews with teachers and staff at five high schools that serve predominantly low-income students and survey responses from teachers across the state (N=601), we assess how teachers describe student responsibilities and accommodate student responsibilities outside of school. We identify the ways teachers portray the classed nature of different student responsibilities and the kinds of solutions they provide to help resolve the tensions between student responsibilities and academic life. We find that school staff describe a range of student responsibilities and identify these responsibilities as connected to students' social-class status. Teacher responses to student responsibilities are largely individual and ad hoc. When administrators report addressing the impacts of student responsibilities through structural change, this change often specifically centers students' paid work (usually intensive paid work that contributes to family finances) while neglecting other types of responsibilities (such as caregiving).

Despite the growing ideological divisions, there has been a surprising political convergence on some issues related to urban policy, social services, and housing. From the spread of charter schools and school choice to the expansion of home ownership through financial deregulation, it is apparent that liberals and conservatives agree. Yet these points of agreement hide or exacerbate racial and economic segregation, and geographically concentrate its deleterious consequences. The Obama Administration's embrace of urban charter schools and school choice is emblematic of this convergence, yet in fact, charter schools are even more segregated than regular public schools. Despite lack of evidence of their efficacy, and strong empirical support for benefits of school integration, Administration officials fail to describe the achievement gap as a reflection of metropolitan segregation. Establishing racially homogenous charter schools in urban neighborhoods, even where charter schools are successful, is but the latest example of what George Romney's allies dismissed as "gilding the ghetto." George Romney had a better approach. He understood that the suburbs themselves must be desegregated so that disadvantaged children could attend predominantly middle class schools in their own neighborhoods. He was defeated in his efforts, and partly because of this defeat, the achievement gap between black and white children has not narrowed nearly as much as it might have done in the last half century. It is unlikely to narrow much further without revisiting the imperative of residential integration in the metropolitan areas. (Contains 126 endnotes.)

This research assumes a relatively stable lifeworld for young people. For example, it assumes that the meaning of volunteering or service is sufficiently similar across multiple contexts to remain a valid and stable indicator. By extension, it also assumes that the lifeworld of young people today is not undergoing a period of rapid, and perhaps even radical, change. This research began with the assumption that it is possible that a series of structural and environmental changes in the lives of young people had occurred in the past ten years or so that were sufficiently strong to have reconfigured the civic ecology, the overall environment in which young people are socialized into civic life. The hope was to reconstruct this ecology on a community wide scale. It was the intention to reconstruct the most significant networks and institutions that shaped the lives of young people as an environment in a single community, Madison, Wisconsin. The hope was further to purposively sample across these multiple networks, in order to demonstrate in some depth the quality of connection and disconnection of young people to these networks, and further, to gauge the meanings that young people themselves ascribed to these attachments. This goal was partially successful. A systematically stratified purposive sampling frame (described in this paper) that allowed identification and interviews of a very diverse group of almost 100 young people in many different contexts of their lives, ranging from the most formal institutions of school, across multiple semi-formal contexts of civic youth organizations, clubs, and volunteer settings, to informal contexts of association was constructed. Put simply, young people?s civic activities and attitudes were greatly shaped by three broad processes: (1) First, family socialization was still a prime determinant of what kinds of activities young people would engage in and why they would do so; (2) Second, the institutional setting of school ined primary context that organized these activities and channeled them in a variety of directions, supplemented in important ways by after-school settings and clubs, service, and volunteer activities; and (3) Finally, the future expectations of young people had a much stronger force in shaping what kinds of activities they engaged in and why than had been expected. Specifically, the role of college loomed larger in the lives of many of the young people and this was true across class and racial backgrounds. Many young people told us that one important reason for their civic engagement was the desire to build a resume for college admission, or in their own words, "resume-padding." And this was so whether they were oriented toward an Ivy League school, state university, or even the local technical college. Almost all of the young people interviewed expected (or at least hoped) to better their lives and linked these expectations to college education, and a majority linked their hopes for college admission to service. (Contains 3 endnotes.) [This paper was produced by Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), University of Maryland.]

This study closely examined interview transcripts collected in six rural schools to describe how educators and community members viewed issues of social class. Data came from an SEA-funded project investigating high-poverty schools honored for serving all students well. This study is one of several drawing on data gathered for this project. Findings demonstrate three distinct approaches to engaging the poor. The major tendency is "saving the poor," a benign middle-class attempt to support impoverished families and intending to help children from such families enter the local middle class. Four of the six schools embrace this approach. The other two schools were different. In one, the poor were repudiated and even demonized. In the other, the poor were not even identified as a group; instead, interviewees described all residents as "common people," and the school exhibited a strong community purpose and a strong concern for the common good. Such close connection permitted educators to convince skeptical rural parents of the value of a prominent reform mathematics curriculum, which this school adopted. The discussion considers several theories potentially useful in explaining the findings: educational leadership, cultural values, community type, economic structure, and historical views of schooling. Examination of issues of economic structure, however, offers unique causal insights. The discussion concludes with an interpretation of the relevance of a deeper understanding of social class issues to the future of rural schooling. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure, and 17 footnotes.) [Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, April 2006.]

The purpose of this project was to gain a better understanding of dimensions of trust and inter-relationships between those dimensions during the adolescent years. Drawing from survey data collected at the beginning and end of a semester in eighty middle- and high-school social studies classes, relationships were assessed between: social trust, trust in elected officials, trust in the responsiveness of government to ordinary people, trust in the American promise, and trustworthiness of the media. The study was designed as a randomized evaluation of a civics curriculum called Student Voices in the Campaign, with data gathered from two waves of surveys with 1,670 students ages 12-19 during the fall of 2004. Students from ethnic minority backgrounds were less likely than their ethnic majority peers to trust elected officials or people in general or to believe that the government was interested in ordinary people. However, ethnic minority students were not less likely to believe in the general tenets of that all people, regardless of background, had an equal opportunity to succeed in America. Controlling for social class, age, and ethnicity, adolescents' trust in the American promise and their civic commitments were found to be significantly predicted by the youths' proximate experiences of social inclusion in their communities and, particularly for ethnic minority students) by their reports that teachers practiced a democratic ethos at school. (Contains 9 tables.)

Reducing socioeconomic differences in college transfer requires a better understanding of how and why parental education, occupational class, and family income are associated with changing colleges. Building on prior studies of traditional community college transfer we explore relationships between those factors and two types of transfer among 4-year college students. Our results indicate that reverse transfer--the move from 4-year to community college--is more common among students from less-educated families partly because of lower levels of academic performance during their freshman year. In contrast, students from advantaged backgrounds in terms of class and income are more likely than others to engage in lateral transfer--4-year to 4-year--which may reflect individual preferences for changing colleges rather than a reaction to poor academic performance. Implications for policy and practice are discussed in light of the fact that only reverse transfer is associated with lower rates of degree completion. Description of variables is appended. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure and 12 footnotes.)

Mathematical practices and knowledge are often in dispute for those race and class identities at the margins of social power. This talk will describe both the ways in which mathematics can be complicit with social domination, and the ways in which it can aid in resistance and reconfiguration. It will end with a presentation of Culturally Situated Design Tools, software based on the ethnomathematics of cultural artifacts from Native American, African American, Latino, and Youth Subculture communities.

Young people from lower class origins continue to face major barriers to university education in Canada. This paper documents both substantial inter-generational class mobility and continuing inequalities in formal educational attainments by class origins. While Canada now has the world's higher educational attainments in its youth cohort and has experienced rapid growth in adult education participation as well, those from professional/managerial families remain more than three times as likely to attain a degree as those from working class origins. There is also mounting evidence that escalating financial costs are again increasing the relative class inequalities in university education. These large and increasing class inequalities are compared with the much more equitable and extensive participation in informal learning found in a recent national survey, as well as the underemployment of working class people in the Canadian job structure. In light of these educational and economic inequalities, needs-based student subsidies and democratic workplace reforms are seen as major means to address persistent discrimination against the learning capacities and aspirations for university education of those from lower class origins. (Contains 4 tables and 37 references.) (Author)

Rural development is often presumed to rest on educational improvement, and high levels of mathematics achievement might seem essential to improving the quality of rural life and the viability of rural communities. Efforts to promote math achievement growth are usually limited to curricular and instructional innovations, while contextual factors related to changing economic activity and social organization are overlooked. In contrast, this study focuses on contextual factors such as the increasing importance of social class, declining payoffs for investments in education, families' need for two incomes, widespread use of dubious-quality child care, and the fragility of nourishing institutions (extended families and neighborhoods). The math achievement growth of 305 elementary students in 6 rural and 6 nonrural schools in West Virginia were examined from kindergarten through the end of grade 3. Using a multilevel repeated-measures model, it was found that math achievement growth in this sample was contextually constrained in ways that are rarely acknowledged. Not surprisingly, maturation (time) and socioeconomic status (SES) were important influences. More surprisingly, neighborhood quality (separate from SES) positively influenced achievement growth, while a school's participation in private daycare (as opposed to Head Start) negatively influenced achievement growth, all else equal. Higher school-level SES and participation in Head Start were associated with greater achievement gains over time. Rural locale did not significantly affect achievement. (Contains 100 references) (Author/SV)

This paper identifies and discusses the connections between the way individuals frame their world based on the language they use and the impact of language and stereotyping on the perception that computer technology is primarily for certain individuals. The study explores how some of the dimensions of the language of computers and technology, computer culture, and computer-based activities are inextricably linked to the language and culture of mathematics which has framed a particular way of thinking about computer technology. The document discusses an array of anecdotal evidence and research findings supporting the contention that technology education carries with it the biases and beliefs of the society in which it operates. The use of computers often exacerbates inequities for students of color and poor students rather than act as an educational panacea. However, a broad understanding of this cultural context can be used to begin to change the culture of the classroom and school to respond better to the educational needs of the broad range of students who traditionally do not succeed. Questions are raised regarding, how to make technology engaging for both males and females and how can a new approach to technology support a democracy? The document concludes with a number of approaches to creating classroom changes. These include increasing the opportunities for girls to engage in technology-related activities, working with more collaborative activities, giving students' more control over the activities that they work on, and changing patterns of discourse. (MJP)

The nations of the capitalistic world devote a high percentage of their exports to trade with other nations in that group, while the underdeveloped nations send most of their exports to the capitalistic nations. The low wages in underdeveloped countries are critical for the maintenance of their position as dominated, for these low wages allow the dominant industrial countries to receive goods at relatively low cost and also to reduce the internal mass market of the underdeveloped countries to a minimum. In a colonial period, education is used by the capitalist countries to produce elites in the dominated countries. Today universal education policies in the underdeveloped countries keep these countries in a state of underdevelopment, for the costs of education and the growing unemployment rates of the educated in urban areas perpetuate a state of dependency. For the individual rural family, belief in advancement via education hinders the individual production and accumulation process and also creates a number of family liabilities in the form of children who cannot function within the existing rural society because they have never learned the required skills. By teaching things which have no obvious usefulness, institutionalized education plays a major role in creating the required mentality of a working class which can be and is controlled by the dominant classes in both the capitalistic and underdeveloped countries. (JC)

The Swedish address system is in a state of rapid change. Consequently, Swedes are now more than ever sensitive to the seeming lack of generally accepted rules of usage. This paper attempts to codify the rules for usage of the personal pronouns "du" and "ni." In so doing, it finds that "du" may be used to express either solidarity or intimacy-familiarity, while "ni" exists in old peasant form as well as in current polite and impolite forms. Generally speaking, one can describe the Swedish address system adequately only if one recognizes that Swedish social classes have different rules due to different semantics (i.e., the covariation between the pronoun used and the objective relationship existing between speaker and addressee) of the pronouns "du" and "ni." (Author/DB)

The special language of particular occupations, the role playing of those who practice them, and the terms in which the communications media and the general public refer to them evoke problematic cognitions about occupational functions and practitioner traits that determine an occupation's high or low social standing. Perceptions of occupations rest heavily on stereotypes that are often class based and occur in sets, each stereotypic feature connoting others in the set as well. Race, ethnicity, sex, class subculture, level of attractiveness and kind of personality are common components of such sets. Linguistic evocations encourage a focus upon the special procedures of high prestige occupations rather than on the achievement of demonstrable results, which are expected from low prestige occupations. The various levels of the occupational hierarchy systematically reinforce each other's high or low standing and also systematically legitimize inequalities in the allocation of values in society as a whole. (Author/TA)

Hospitality patterns of the Bororo Indians are illustrated in two examples: the etiquette due to a visiting chief from another Bororo village, and the etiquette due any common visitor from another Bororo village. Formal hospitality differs greatly from the usual etiquette. At a visiting chief's arrival, he enters as the last of his group and waits in a central location until the village chief arrives to have an oral duel with him, which establishes their wisdom and rights; the last to speak is the winner. In this duel the importance of names, titles, ornaments, and other social codes of ownership symbolic of survival is expressed. A common visitor goes to the central plaza and shouts out all his personal names and waits to be invited into the meetingplace of the men's council for a long and detailed interview, focusing on his family's names, in order to be placed properly for eating and sleeping in a home of his name-category ("mother,""father,""godmother,""godfather"). Name categories also determine seating. Every person a Bororo may call by a kinship term is inserted into a system of food, shelter, and gift reciprocity. The origin of the kinship ties is in the tradition that a Bororo is not just a descendant of an ancestor but a representative of a mythological hero associated with the name-category. In naming a child the Bororo attempt not to "lose names." A hierarchy of social prestige is expressed in kin terms. However, naming practices do not reflect any formal kinship system--kinship is a secondary effect of naming practices. (MSE)

African Wolof society is divided into a number of ranked status groups or castes, the largest of which is the high-ranking noble caste. Wolof conceive of two styles of speaking, the restrained or noble-like and the elaborated or "griot"-like, and the two styles are connected by the presence or absence of "kerse," honor and self-control. The linguistic phenomena relevant to social rank are found in all aspects of speech performance: paralinguistic phenomena (such as intonation), phonology, syntax, and lexicon. Intonational features provide the most striking differences in style. Phonological differences seem to be related to differences in speech tempo. The griot style uses syntactic devices that lengthen the total utterance but add little or nothing to its meaning, while the noble style uses shorter, blander forms and intentional errors as a sign of high rank. The variants can also signal high and low rank within a caste. The use of intentional error can create confusion between a high-ranking individual and a linguistically incompetent foreigner. The linguistic system as a whole may have shifted in the direction of the high-status variant, and the reduction in surface elaboration is consistent with high-rank restraint and nonfluency, possibly arising from the general population's desire to appear more high-ranking. Thus the cultural valuation of speech can influence both the form and the direction of language change. (MSE)

Given the skyrocketing costs of higher education, some borrowers -- particularly those with low incomes and those who were scammed by for-profit colleges -- genuinely need assistance. But portraying student loan forgiveness as a working-class issue is highly misleading. In fact, data on student borrowing shows that debt relief benefits few working-class families, most of whom never attended college in the first place. This paper dives deeply into the evidence on the economic impact of student loan forgiveness. As the paper shows, proposals from political progressives to forgive all student loan debt (or large amounts such as $50,000 of debt) overwhelmingly benefit affluent Americans. President Biden departed from these more elitist proposals, yet his decision to forgive even a more limited amount is still puzzling. At a time when the economic returns to education are rising and the Democratic Party is losing noncollege voters, it makes little sense to target government aid to people who attended college. The paper goes on to examine the question of why the Democratic Party -- traditionally the party of working-class people -- has become so focused on canceling student loans.

The notion of individual freedom is valued by virtually all social, economic, and political belief systems. To be sure, how it is defined is heavily contested, it is never valued without limits (i.e., it is not an absolute value that trumps all other values), and it is less central to some moral and political philosophies than others. However it is defined, individual economic freedom is a core aspect of economic justice. By advancing individual economic freedom, education--including postsecondary education--can advance economic justice, insofar as it also reduces socioeconomic disparities. It is likely that income, wealth, and class gaps will always exist--and income and wealth gaps may be acceptable insofar they are no more than what is necessary to create incentives for socially desirable activity. To be sure, income and wealth gaps as they exist today in the U.S. are extreme and harmful and must be shrunk to more justified and socially beneficial levels--and some gaps, like those by race, are simply unjustifiable. To better understand how postsecondary education affects economic freedom and justice, this paper first outlines the interplay between freedom, justice, and education, with particular attention given to the capabilities approach framework. It then discusses potential indicators for guiding and evaluating practical implementation of this framework. In doing so, this paper contributes to philosophical, measurement, and policy considerations for defining and measuring postsecondary value, especially for undergraduate credential attainment.