{"title":"The Terms of Inclusion: Transitional School Programs in a Racialized Organizational Field","authors":"Dominic Terrel Walker","doi":"10.1177/00380407251319511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251319511","url":null,"abstract":"As organizations committed to providing upward social mobility and leadership development for academically high-achieving working-class youth of color, transitional school programs (TSPs) prepare students to transition from urban public schools to elite, mostly private high schools. However, TSPs’ dependence on wealthy, White institutions to achieve these goals highlights racialized contradictions in the organizational field. How do TSPs navigate the race and class conflicts between the goals of their program and the racial organizational field of elite schools on which they depend for survival? Drawing on two years of ethnographic research at Ascend, a TSP in a northeastern city, this article demonstrates how because of racialized dependencies, Ascend is compelled to adopt the inequitable practices and assumptions of the racialized organizational field of elite education. Yet over time, the organization begins to resist this organizational order by decoupling their practices from elite schools. Student voice and activism contributed to destabilizing this racialized organizational order through direct action. As Ascend’s loose coupling to the field became untenable during national student protests, the organization sought to recouple to the demands of student protesters by explicitly renegotiating the terms of inclusion for their students in the racialized organizational field. These findings contribute to a limited literature about TSPs, organizations critical to the desegregation of elite schools. The findings also demonstrate how studying an organization in the context of its organizational field can reveal how organizations become racialized in practice. Finally, the case of Ascend shows that decoupling, previously theorized to be a method of evading commitments to equity, may also be a method of subverting racialized dependencies.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143452368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stratification in Countries with Flatter (Institutional) Hierarchies? Insights from Administrative Data in Canada","authors":"David Zarifa, Yujiro Sano, Roger Pizarro Milian","doi":"10.1177/00380407241311551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407241311551","url":null,"abstract":"Researchers have repeatedly found that within modern higher education systems, students from wealthier backgrounds tend to be concentrated in the most advantageous sectors. Dubbed “effectively maintained inequality,” this process allows these groups to maintain a competitive advantage in the labor market by virtue of acquiring more elite credentials. But what happens in nations with flatter university hierarchies, where there is relatively modest vertical differentiation in the brand strength of domestic universities? Through this study, we provide the first national-level analysis of the relationship between parental income and access to more selective, better resourced, and higher ranking Canadian universities. We also assess the extent to which there is an earnings premium associated with attending these more elite institutions. Our results suggest there are few differences in the types of universities attended by Canadians from different economic strata. Moreover, any earnings premium associated with attending a more elite Canadian university disappears once we account for basic demographic and field of study controls. We theorize that Canadian universities’ flatter institutional hierarchy drives wealthy families to seek advantages through enrollment in elite majors (e.g., business, engineering) and other tactics that take place outside the higher education system.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143375312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Message from the Editors","authors":"William Carbonaro, Anna R. Haskins","doi":"10.1177/00380407241299625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407241299625","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142879637","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Curricular Differentiation and Informal Networks: How Formal Grouping and Ranking Practices Shape Friendships among Students in College","authors":"Wesley Jeffrey","doi":"10.1177/00380407241300602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407241300602","url":null,"abstract":"This study draws on complete friendship network data on two first-year biological sciences cohorts at a selective university in the United States to investigate how and to what extent allocating students to curricular groups and grading their performance in class shape (1) processes of friend selection at the dyadic level and (2) friendship clustering at the network level. Through a set of stochastic actor-oriented models, results show that students tend to befriend peers from the same curricular group versus a different one (i.e., curricular group homophily) and befriend higher-performing peers (i.e., performance-based status). Follow-up analyses reveal that friendship clustering by curricular group placement is largely due to course co-enrollment (i.e., proximity), whereas academic-performance-based clustering is primarily the result of students aligning their own performance to match the average performance of their friends (i.e., influence). I discuss implications of these findings for helping to promote learning in higher education.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142841974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sent out, Kept In: Detainment-Based Discipline in a Public High School","authors":"Karlyn J. Gorski","doi":"10.1177/00380407241300640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407241300640","url":null,"abstract":"Exclusionary discipline receives considerable scholarly attention, but the concept homogenizes practices that rely on the physical detainment of youth, such as in-school suspension, and practices that do not, such as out-of-school suspension. In this article, I argue that school discipline should be evaluated not only on the basis of whether it is exclusionary but also whether it is detainment-based. Whereas a practice such as in-school suspension relies on students’ physical detention, out-of-school suspension releases them from the school’s carceral control. I draw on three years of ethnographic observations and 108 interviews in a public high school to explore why and how students and adults differently evaluated detainment-based versus non-detainment-based practices. Although both groups drew parallels between detainment-based discipline and carcerality, adults insisted that detainment-based discipline was less “severe.” Students, however, strongly preferred non-detainment-based discipline because it released them to relative “freedom.” I explore the implications of these findings for both researchers and practitioners.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142789870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Month of Birth, Early Academic Achievement, and Parental Expectations of University Completion: A New Test on Sticky Expectations","authors":"Fabrizio Bernardi, Manuel T. Valdés","doi":"10.1177/00380407241300306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407241300306","url":null,"abstract":"Previous studies have shown that educational expectations of individuals with high socioeconomic status (SES) are relatively unaffected by low academic performance, a phenomenon called “sticky expectations.” However, this result might be biased by endogeneity and reverse causality between academic achievement and educational expectations. Using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study from 11 countries with a strict school-entry rule and building on the well-established finding that children born in the months before the school-entry cutoff underperform at school, we use birth month as an instrument to identify the causal effect of early academic achievement on parents’ expectations of university completion by parental education. Our findings based on the instrumental variable (IV) regression show that the moderation of social origin in the relationship between children’s performance and parental expectations is moderately overestimated in cross-sectional data. Nonetheless, the stickiness of high-SES parental expectations is confirmed in the IV model, proving that parental expectations are less affected by children’s early achievement when the parents are highly educated.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142718399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of Schooling in Equalizing Achievement Disparity by Migrant Background","authors":"Giampiero Passaretta, Jan Skopek","doi":"10.1177/00380407241293692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407241293692","url":null,"abstract":"Does schooling equalize achievement disparities among students with and without a migrant background? This question remains largely unanswered in sociology. We hypothesized that children of migrants would benefit more from schooling, thereby making schools engines of educational integration. Our study tests this hypothesis in the context of German primary schooling using data from the National Educational Panel Study. We compared the achievements of students from native families and those with Western, non-Western (including Turkey), and former Soviet Union migrant backgrounds. Using the differential exposure approach, we decomposed learning into two causally distinct components: learning due to school exposure and learning due to being older at the time of testing. Our findings do not support the notion that schooling equalizes migrant–native achievement gaps. Instead, our results suggest that school exposure may widen the gap between the two largest groups of migrants in Germany, with students from the former Soviet Union disproportionally benefiting from school compared to other non-Western students. We conclude that German primary schools are not functioning as engines of educational integration because schooling does not reduce the migrant–native achievement gap and migrant groups with the greatest educational disadvantage benefit the least from schooling.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142684133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Complicating the “Suburban Advantage”: Examining Racial and Gender Inequality in Suburban and Urban School Settings","authors":"Emily E. N. Miller, Alejandro Schugurensky","doi":"10.1177/00380407241291997","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407241291997","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the racial and gender dynamics of educational inequality in suburban public schools in the United States during an era of rapid demographic change. As suburban schools transition from predominantly White enclaves to more diverse settings, it is unclear to what extent the popular narrative of “suburban advantage” holds for newcomers. Using a longitudinal data set of majority non-White, lower-income students (the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study), we explore how these students fare compared to urban counterparts during this transformative period. Our findings suggest that suburban schools are higher resourced than their urban counterparts, yet there are minimal urban–suburban differences in educational outcomes after accounting for individual and family characteristics. Furthermore, we reveal disparities in urban–suburban differences by race and gender. Our research challenges narratives that treat suburban institutions as monoliths and suggests the purported advantages of suburban schooling are not conferred uniformly to all students.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142637548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Expectational Liminality of Insecure College Graduates","authors":"Elena Ayala-Hurtado","doi":"10.1177/00380407241296851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407241296851","url":null,"abstract":"Graduating from college is widely associated with social and personal advancement, yet many young graduates are not experiencing these benefits. Drawing on 127 interviews with college graduates in the United States and Spain who face employment precarity or economic instability, this study asks: How do these graduates understand their social positions and worth? How does the institution of higher education shape these understandings? The data demonstrate that respondents in both countries largely describe themselves as stalled or stuck. I argue that these are perceptions of “expectational liminality” stemming from the disjuncture between respondents’ expectations and their experiences as college graduates. In addition, I show how three narratives describing the professional/financial success, life course progression, and internal transformation expected of graduates shape respondents’ sense of expectational liminality. I discuss the effects of higher education on graduates’ self-perceptions in uncertain contexts and the relevance of expectational liminality to other contexts where there are disjunctures between expectations and reality.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"155 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142599405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}