Individual and School-Level Correlates of the Educational Aspirations of Older Adolescents.

This paper explores the individual and contextual effects of schools on the educational aspirations of a national sample of older adolescents. With individual student traits held constant, school-level contextual variables contributed little to the explanation of postsecondary school plans to graduate from college (R2 increase = .012). However, with individual-level student ethnicity, family background, and academic achievement held constant, a measure of classroom morale was positively and significantly associated with educational aspiration. This extends the well-documented link between class environment and learning to educational aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]