The long shadow Alexander, Karl; Entwisle, Doris; Olson, Linda
Russell Sage Foundation,
2014, 20140531, 2014-06-00
eBook, Book
Contents: - The long shadow and urban disadvantageUrban disadvantage at the outset : the Baltimore backdrop. - Urban disadvantage as family disadvantage. - Stepping outside : urban disadvantage in ...neighborhood and school. - Transitioning to adulthood. - Socioeconomic destinations : the BSSYP a quarter century later. - The long shadow realized : status attainment in the BSSYP. - Race and gender stratification in urban disadvantage. - The reproduction of urban disadvantage.
Prior research has demonstrated that summer learning rooted in family and community influences widens the achievement gap across social lines, while schooling offsets those family and community ...influences. In this article, we examine the long-term educational consequences of summer learning differences by family socioeconomic level. Using data from the Baltimore Beginning School Study youth panel, we decompose achievement scores at the start of high school into their developmental precursors, back to the time of school entry in 1st grade. We find that cumulative achievement gains over the first nine years of children's schooling mainly reflect school-year learning, whereas the high SES-low SES achievement gap at 9th grade mainly traces to differential summer learning over the elementary years. These early out-of-school summer learning differences, in turn, substantially account for achievement-related differences by family SES in high school track placements (college preparatory or not), high school noncompletion, and four-year college attendance. We discuss implications for understanding the bases of educational stratification, as well as educational policy and practice.
Early schooling Entwisle, Doris R; Olson, Linda S; Alexander, Karl L
Sociology of education,
04/2007, Letnik:
80, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In trying to understand the origin of gender differences favoring girls in reading skills, analysts have examined mainly the performance of students who are in the same grade, with samples pooled ...across socioeconomic status (SES). Using a longitudinal sample in Baltimore, where all students in a randomly selected panel are the same age and are followed from the beginning of the first grade, the authors found that the early reading skills of boys who are receiving meal subsidies - those who are disadvantaged - are lower than those of girls. Among children who are not on meal subsidies, boys do about the same as girls. This gender gap that emerges over the elementary school years is explained in terms of the higher retention rate of disadvantaged boys, which traces back to teachers' low ratings of classroom behavior and reading skills for boys on meal subsidies and to their parents' lower expectations for boys' school performance. The longitudinal design of this study, the early point from which children are followed (age 6), and the attention given to SES differences in how parents and teachers treat boys are key differences between this research and other studies of gender differences in reading comprehension. The discussion points up the critical nature of the first-grade transition in relation to the gender gap and some of its long-term implications. (DIPF/Orig.).
Used data from a panel of Baltimore students to describe the long-term process of disengagement from school that leads to high school dropout. Nearly half of the study group left school without a ...degree. There were significant differences across sociodemographic lines involving academic, parental, and personal resources. These resources also added onto one another to moderate dropout risk. (SM)
In tracking the educational progress of a sample of Baltimore school- children from entrance into first grade fall 1982 through early spring 1996, the authors examined the children's personal ...qualities, first-grade experiences, and family circumstances as precursors to high school dropout. Logistic regression analyses were used to identify predictors of dropout involving family context measures (stressful family changes, parents' attitudes, and parents' socialization practices), children's personal resources (attitudes and behaviors), and school experiences ( test scores, marks, and track placements). These various measures were found to influence dropout independently of sociodemographic factors and account for much of the difference in the odds of dropout associated with family socioeconomic status, gender, family type, and other "risk factors." The authors take a life-course perspective on dropout, viewing it as the culmination of a long-term process of academic disengagement.(DIPF/Abstract übernommen)
Are there socioeconomic differences in the seasonality of children's learning over the school year and summer months? The achievement gap across social lines increases during the primary grades, as ...much research indicates, but descriptive analyses and HLM within-person growth models for a representative panel of Baltimore school children demonstrate that the increase can be traced mainly to the out-of-school environment (i.e., influences situated in home and community). School-year verbal and quantitative achievement gains are comparable for upper socioeconomic status (SES) and lower SES children, but summer gains, when children are out of school, evidence large disparities. During the summer, upper SES children's skills continue to advance (albeit at a slower rate than during the school year), but lower SES children's gains, on average, are flat. This seasonal pattern of achievement gains implies that schooling plays an important compensatory role, one that is obscured when achievement is compared on an annual basis, as is typical. Policy implications of the seasonality of learning are discussed, including support for preventive measures over the preschool years and for programs, possibly including calendar reforms and summer school, to support disadvantaged children's learning year-round.
This short paper provides some guidelines to help researchers in child and adolescent development procure the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic information that will best determine how to assign ...youngsters to ethnic or SES groups. These guidelines are necessarily general. They will need to be adapted thoughtfully by each investigator because, as is generally true, how to define a measure depends intimately on the nature of the research problem. In preparing these guidelines, we have taken into account current practice at the Bureau of the Census, research traditions developed by sociologists who have mainly been concerned with adults, and challenges posed by the changing character of the U. S. population and its family forms. We are extremely grateful to the many social scientists listed below who have contributed so generously to our thinking, but especially to Robert Hauser. Naturally, any errors or opacities that remain are our responsibility.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Research on summer learning has shown that children from a higher socioeconomic status (SES) continue to learn during the summer months of elementary school, but lower-SES students tend to stagnate ...or lose ground. However, not all low-SES students experience summer learning loss. Drawing on the Beginning School Study (BSS), a longitudinal study of a random sample of Baltimore public school students who began first grade in 1982, this article identifies a small sample of low-SES students who gained as much as their higher-SES peers in reading or math during at least three of the four summers of elementary school. Drawing on Coleman and Hoffer's (
1987
) theory of within-family social capital, we identify parental characteristics and practices that set these low-SES exceptional summer learners (ESLs) apart from their low-SES peers, who evidence the more typical pattern of summer slide.
There is perhaps no more pressing issue in school policy today than the achievement gap across social lines. Achievement differences between well‐to‐do children and poor children and between ...disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities and majority whites are large when children first begin school, and they increase over time. Despite years of study and an abundance of good intentions, these patterned achievement differences persist, but who is responsible, and how are schools implicated? The increasing gap seems to suggest that schools are unable to equalize educational opportunity or, worse still, that they actively handicap disadvantaged children. But a seasonal perspective on learning yields a rather different impression. Comparing achievement gains separately over the school year and the summer months reveals that much of the achievement gap originates over the summer period, when children are not in school. The authors review Beginning School Study research on differential summer learning across social lines (that is, by family socioeconomic level) and its implications for later schooling outcomes, including high school curriculum placements, high school dropout, and college attendance. These studies document the extent to which these large summer learning differences impede the later educational progress of children of low socioeconomic status. Practical implications are discussed, including the need for early and sustained interventions to prevent the achievement gap from opening wide in the first place and for high‐quality summer programming focused on preventing differential summer learning loss.
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