Although there is an abundance of research on the association of school poverty (or socioeconomic status) and test score level, there is very little rigorous longitudinal evidence on the cumulative effects of exposure to differing school contexts. Drawing from methods used first in epidemiology and then in neighborhood effects research, we use…

Asian American students are frequently stereotyped to be hardworking and academically talented. To what extent are teacher appraisals of Asian students influenced by such racial stereotypes? This article investigates this question through a quantitative analysis of high school students from the Educational Longitudinal Study. I find that even when…

in this article, Florencia Torche, professor of sociology at New York University, reflects on the central question posed by the Coleman Report: What role do schools play in promoting equality of opportunity? The Coleman Report relied on analysis of variance and regression analysis, but over the past 50 years, social scientists have developed new…

When do children become unequal in reading and math skills? Some research claims that inequality grows mainly before school begins. Some research claims that schools cause inequality to grow. And some research--including the 2004 study ''Are Schools the Great Equalizer?''--claims that inequality grows mainly during summer vacations. Unfortunately,…

A growing literature documents the myriad penalties for children of incarcerated fathers, but relatively little is known about how paternal incarceration contributes to educational outcomes in early and middle childhood. In this article, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to provide the first estimates of the…

Drawing on comparative analyses from nine Western countries, we ask whether local-born children from a wide range of immigrant groups show patterns of female advantage in education that are similar to those prevalent in their host Western societies. We consider five outcomes throughout the educational career: test scores or grades at age 15,…

Most studies find a positive correlation between family cultural capital and educational achievement. As compelling as the evidence on the advantages of family cultural capital for educational achievement is, most studies have focused on countries characterized by having a large middle class and high levels of income, not addressing societies with…

How do proficiency-based accountability systems affect inequality in academic achievement? This article reconciles mixed findings in the literature by demonstrating that three factors jointly determine accountability's impact. First, by analyzing student-level data from a large urban school district, we find that when educators face accountability…

Why does the United States lag behind so many other countries on international education assessments? The traditional view targets school-based explanations--U.S. schools attract poorer teachers and lack the proper incentives. But the U.S. educational system may also serve children with comparatively greater academic challenges as a result of…

Persistent school segregation means not only that children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds attend different schools but also that their schools are unequal in performance. This study documents the extent of disparities nationally in school performance between schools attended by whites and Asians compared with those attended by blacks,…

Through several decades of research, a great deal has been written about trends in black-white test scores and the factors that may explain the gaps in different subject areas. Only a few studies have examined the changing relationships between gaps in students' test scores and family and school measures in nationally representative data over…