Carl L. Bankston

Effect of School Population Socioeconomic Status on Individual Academic Achievement

ABSTRACT The relationship between the socioeconomic status (SES) of peers and individual academic achievement was examined in this study. This question was investigated while a variety of sociodemographic factors were being controlled, including a students own SES. Student SES was measured by using participation in the federal free/reduced–price lunch program as an indicator of poverty status, and parental educational and occupational background as a measure of family social status. These measures were aggregated to the school level to define the SES of the peer population. Student achievement is a factor score of the three 10th–grade components of the Louisiana Graduation Exit Examination. Peer family social status in particular does have a significant and substantive independent effect on individual academic achievement, only slightly less than an individuals own family social status.

Social Capital as Process: The Meanings and Problems of a Theoretical Metaphor

In this study, we suggest that the difficulty in defining, locating, and measuring social capital is at core a philosophical confusion of language, and not just a consequence of excessively wide application. The term ‘‘capital’’ refers to resources for investment. Financial capital consists of specific quantities of assets. Human capital, a metaphorical extension of financial capital, also consists of specific quantities of assets, in the form of skills or credentials. However, social capital, a third metaphorical construction, does not consist of resources that are held by individuals or by groups but of processes of social interaction leading to constructive outcomes. Therefore, we argue, social capital is not located at any one level of analysis: it emerges across levels of analysis. The confusion over the meaning of this term, then, is a consequence of a metaphorical confusion of a substantive quantity (capital) and a process that takes place through stages (embedded, goal-directed social relations). Locating and defining social capital is further complicated by the variability, contextuality, and conditionality of the process. Stages of social relations that lead to constructive outcomes for one group of people or in one situation may not lead to constructive outcomes for another group or in another situation. To illustrate empirically how social capital may be thought of as a process consisting of stages and to demonstrate why the concept is inherently problematic, we employ data from the 1995 interviews of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). These data enable us to examine connections among the stages of the social capital process found in the literature and to look at predictors of academic achievement, a central topic in research on this topic.

Being Well vs. Doing Well: Self-Esteem and School Performance among Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Racial and Ethnic Groups.

It has frequently been suggested that the academic achievement of minority students may be hindered by low self-esteem in a white-dominated society. Some researchers and theorists, however, have questioned such assumptions. The self-esteem-academic achievement issue is further complicated by the relatively strong performance of children of immigrants in general, and of children of Asian immigrants in particular. A substantial literature suggests that these children face insecurities and difficulties that are inconsistent with high self-esteem. In examining data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that Asians do show the lowest levels of reported self-esteem of the major racial/ethnic groups, but also the highest grade-point averages. Black adolescents, on the other hand, show the highest levels of reported self-esteem, but show relatively low grade-point averages. In further examination, we demonstrate that despite this apparent inconsistency between school performance and reported self-esteem, the two do have a positive relationship. Immigrant parental status, we suggest, has a complex relationship to school performance and psychological well-being that can help to explain the apparent paradox.

The Inequality of Separation: Racial Composition of Schools and Academic Achievement

Using multilevel modeling, this study examines the effect of African American concentration in Louisiana public schools on the academic achievement of African American and White students. The authors consider this question as they control for a variety of individual and school-level sociodemographic factors, including socioeconomic status and student race. African American concentration is defined as the percentage of the student body that is African American. Student achievement is a factor score derived from the three 10th-grade components of the Louisiana Graduation Exit Examination. The data are drawn from the 1990 test results of 42,000 students from 342 secondary schools. The study finds that, controlling for all variables, African American concentration still has a negative effect on student achievement. However, the percentage of minority students only begins to have a significant negative effect at relatively high levels of concentration. These findings suggest that to resegregate African American students could have negative academic outcomes for those students.

Family pressure and the educational experience of the daughters of Vietnamese refugees.

This article explores the issue of gender role changes encountered by young Vietnamese-American women based on our ethnographic study of Versailles Village, a low-income ethnic community in New Orleans, US. We examine how female Vietnamese high school students deal with conflicts between the stubborn traditionalism of parents and the desire for personal liberty of American-reared children and how they negotiate gender roles at home and in school and society. Through in-depth examination of the school experience of young Vietnamese women, we find that they not only equal young men in scholastic performance and ambition, but may even show higher levels of achievement. Our data indicate that it is not because the women are liberating themselves from traditional gender roles in order to avail themselves of the opportunities of American society. Instead, the socio-economic conditions of the new land place a new emphasis on education for both men and women. Immigrant families see the importance of education as an avenue of upward mobility for their children and encourage educational achievement. Precisely because traditional gender roles lead families to exercise greater control over daughters, young women are pushed even more than young men toward scholastic performance.

THE ETHNIC CHURCH, ETHNIC IDENTIFICATION, AND THE SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT OF VIETNAMESE ADOLESCENTS*

This article examines the effect of participation in an ethnic religious institution on ethnic identification and social adjustment to American society by Vietnamese adolescents. It considers to what extent ethnic identification and social adjustment may be the product of church attendance and church-sponsored formal educational programs. Our results show that church attendance has a consistently significant influence on ethnic identification and that church-sponsored formal educational programs contribute to stronger ethnic identification (chiefly by increasing use of the Vietnamese language) and to better adjustment (by positively influencing scholastic performance). However, the relationship between church attendance and ethnic identification is not merely determined by the formal educational programs sponsored by the church. We suggest rather that the ethnic church serves as a network focus for the ethnic community and that participation in the ethnic church binds youth more closely to the ethnic network. The close association with the ethnic community, in turn, facilitates positive adjustment of immigrant adolescents to American society by increasing the probability that they will do well in school, set their sights on future education, and avoid some of the dangers that confront contemporary young people. We conclude that the immigrant congregation should be viewed as promoting adjustment to American society because it encourages the cultivation of ethnic group membership.

Multilevel Examination of Student, School, and District-Level Effects on Academic Achievement

Abstract The authors examined the relationship between individual family structure, school family structure, and school effectiveness—defined as school academic achievement. The relationships were examined while controlling for important school and district-level input and process factors. School family structure had a much stronger relationship with school achievement than either school socioeconomic status or school racial composition. Neither district-level process nor input factors mitigated the strong relationship between school family structure and school academic achievement. School-level family structure had a more important association with individual-level achievement than even an individuals own family structure. The relationship could not be accounted for by an array of district-level factors.

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND IMMIGRANT CHILDREN'S ACHIEVEMENT

We suggest that the commonly used familial closure version of social capital does not provide an adequate explanation for the school achievement of children in immigrant families. Instead, we suggest that extra-familial institutions, notably immigrant religious institutions, contribute to the school performance of children. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that the average grades of immigrant children can be accounted for by involvement in ethnic religious organizations, but not by parental involvement in social networks.

Youth Gangs and the New Second Generation: A Review Essay

Abstract Changes in American immigration law in 1965 led to an enormous increase in the number of immigrants arriving in the United States and to a shift in the countries of origin of American immigrants from Europe to Central and South America and Asia. The children of this new wave of immigrants have been labeled “the new second generation.” At the same time that these children have grown to adolescence and young adulthood, violent youth gangs have become a prominent aspect of American life. While the children of immigrants are not the only participants in gang activity, many gangs have appeared in neighborhoods where immigrants have settled, and these gangs are often based on the ethnic identities of post-1965 immigrant groups. This essay discusses general theoretical trends in the literature relating to youth gangs in the post-1965 immigrant ethnic groups. It suggests that these trends may be classified as opportunity structure approaches, cultural approaches, and social disorganization approaches. The essay points out some of the major questions this literature raises or fails to address, and it suggests directions for the conceptualization of new ethnic gangs and for empirical research in this area.

De facto congregationalism and socioeconomic mobility in Laotian and Vietnamese immigrant communities : A study of religious institutions and economic change

Sociologist R. Stephen Warner has recently proposed that immigrant religious organizations in the United States tend to take on a de facto congregational form. By this, he means that they tend to become voluntary gatherings with lay involve ment and control and professionalized clergies. In this study, we provide descrip tions of two Southeast Asian religious organizations, one Vietnamese Catholic and one Laotian Buddhist. We examine how the concept of a de facto congrega tion can provide a theoretical framework for understanding how ethnic commu nities in these two groups gave rise to immigrant ethnic congregations. Further, we attempt to describe the mechanics of congregationalization by discussing how members of the community in question formed their religious organizations for the perpetuation of cultural traditions. We suggest that although cultural preservation was a key manifest function of the church and the temple, these two also served a latent function of expressing and promoting socioeconomic mobility. Both the voluntary character of the organizations and the mobility associated with them tended, ironically, to reshape the organizations into non-traditional congregational forms.