Elizabeth Stearns

When and Why Dropouts Leave High School.

Teens may leave school because of academic failure, disciplinary problems, or employment opportunities. In this article, the authors test whether the reasons dropouts leave school differ by grade level and age. We compare dropout rates and reasons across grade levels and ages for all high school students, ethnic groups, and gender groups. Across all students, ninth graders have the highest dropout rate: This pattern persists for Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, and for male students. Dropout reasons vary by age, grade, ethnicity, and gender as well. Ninth graders and students aged 16 and younger are more likely than advanced and older students to leave school for disciplinary reasons. Older male students are more likely than younger males to leave school for employment. The significant variation in dropout rates and reasons by grade level and age indicates that multiple dropout processes may influence teens to leave school.

Staying Back and Dropping Out: The Relationship Between Grade Retention and School Dropout

Students who repeat a grade prior to high school have a higher risk of dropping out of high school than do students who are continuously promoted. This study tested whether standard theories of dropout—including the participation-identification model and the social capital model—explain this link. Although the presence of variables, including academic achievement and disciplinary problems, reduces the higher probability of retained students dropping out, existing models of dropping out do not adequately explain the markedly higher probability of dropping out for retained students. Regression decomposition reveals differences between promoted and retained students in the importance of resources and illustrates that various resources hold different levels of importance for white, black, and Latino students.

Interracial Friendships in the Transition to College: Do Birds of a Feather Flock Together Once They Leave the Nest?

Because of segregation in neighborhoods and schools, college may provide the first opportunity for many young adults to interact closely with members of different racial and ethnic groups. Little research has examined how interracial friendships form during this period. This article investigates changes in the racial composition of friendship networks in the transition from high school to college and how aspects of the college environment are related to such changes. Interracial friendships increase for whites, decrease for blacks, and show little change for Latinos and Asians. The habits of friendship formation that are acquired during adolescence and features of residential and extracurricular college contexts influence the formation of interracial friendships. The race of ones roommate, the degree of interracial contact in residence halls, and participation in various types of extracurricular activities are most strongly related to the formation of interracial friendships.

Collective Pedagogical Teacher Culture and Mathematics Achievement Differences by Race, Ethnicity, and Socioeconomic Status

Scholars have not adequately assessed how organizational cultures in schools differentially influence students’ mathematics achievement by race and socioeconomic status (SES). We focus on what we term collective pedagogical teacher culture, highlighting the role of professional communities and teacher collaboration in influencing mathematics achievement. Using cross-classified growth models, we analyze data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and illustrate that schools where teachers perceive the presence of professional communities and teacher collaboration foster greater mathematics achievement throughout elementary school. Furthermore, achievement gaps by race and socioeconomic status are lessened in schools with professional communities and teacher collaboration.

Student Achievement and College Selectivity: How Changes in Achievement during High School Affect the Selectivity of College Attended.

Researchers who examine the link between high school achievement and educational outcomes include measures of achievement that conflate high school effects with achievement effects established prior to high school. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, this article disaggregates achievement into achievement prior to high school (in the eighth grade) and changes in achievement during high school. The authors find that the prestige of the colleges that students attend is largely solidified by the time students enter high school. They also find that among high socioeconomic status (SES) students, lower achievers can enhance the prestige of the colleges they will attend by moving up the achievement distribution during high school. However, even if their gains are well above average, the prestige of the colleges they are predicted to attend will not surpass students who enter high school at the top or middle of the eighth-grade achievement distribution. These findings are similar for low-SES students. In contrast, the effects of achievement for middle-SES students are largely solidified by high school.

Tracking Success: High School Curricula and Labor Market Outcomes by Race and Gender.

Education researchers have established that educational tracking reinforces inequalities, but they have not fully examined the affect of these tracks on labor market outcomes for men and women of different races/ethnicities. At the same time, labor market researchers have studied the association between education and income by race and gender, but they do not distinguish among types of education. The researchers integrate these literatures by examining the relationship between educational tracking in secondary school and income in young adulthood, using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study. This study finds that educational tracking is associated with income, independent of the quantity of education.

Changing course: the gender gap in college selectivity and opportunities to learn in the high school curriculum

Gender gaps in learning and education outcomes have changed dramatically over the last few years. However, researchers have not adequately assessed how the high school learning environment differentially affects boys and girls. An important component of the learning environment in US secondary school is the opportunity to learn in an Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum, which allows high school students to do college-level work. Using the US National Education Longitudinal Study 1988–2000, we explain how high school AP curriculum interacts with gender to predict the selectivity of colleges that students attend. The results show that girls and boys who attend high schools with a larger percentage of students in AP curriculum attend more selective colleges (that require higher standardised scores for admissions); yet the positive effect of the opportunity to learn in an AP curriculum is greater for girls than for boys. This research furthers the debate about the effects of school structure on gender stratification.

Opportunities to Play the Game: The Effect of Individual and School Attributes on Participation in Sports

Historically, African Americans and white girls have not had the same access to playing sports as white boys have had. Changes in laws led to racial integration of sports teams and equal athletic opportunities for girls. Yet, racial and gender gaps in playing sports persist, and intersections between race and gender, as well as different contexts of participation, may contribute to the gaps. This article uses structural resource and racial competition theories to examine the interactions among race, gender, and school environment to determine whether racial gaps persist for boys and girls and whether individual and school-level factors account for gender-specific racial gaps in sports participation. We combine data on every ninth-grade student in North Carolina public schools with data from school yearbooks and find that racial gaps in playing sports differ by gender, and that school factors—including opportunities schools provide to play sports—have unique influences on racial gaps for boys and girls.

Peer Contextual Influences on the Growth of Authority-Acceptance Problems in Early Elementary School

This study investigated the effects of the peer social context and child characteristics on the growth of authority-acceptance behavior problems across first, second, and third grades, using data from the normative sample of the Fast Track Project. Three hundred sixty-eight European American and African American boys and girls (51% male; 46% African American) and their classmates were assessed in each grade by teacher ratings on the the Teacher Observation of Child Adaptation—Revised. Childrens growth in authority-acceptance behavior problems across time was partially attributable to the level of disruptive behavior in the classroom peer context into which they were placed. Peer-context influences, however, were strongest among same-gender peers. Findings held for both boys and girls, both European Americans and African Americans, and nondeviant, marginally deviant, and highly deviant children. Findings suggest that children learn and follow behavioral norms from their same-gender peers within the classroom.

Perceptions of Future Career Family Flexibility as a Deterrent from Majoring in STEM

Research on the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) “pipeline” has charted the loss of potential STEM talent throughout students’ secondary and postsecondary trajectories. One source of STEM talent loss that has been commonly suggested throughout the literature is the lack of family friendly flexibility in STEM careers. This explanation has been offered as a reason why women are underrepresented in the STEM fields. We test this thesis using original survey data collected from 3,229 college students at each of the 16 North Carolina public universities. Our results indicate that a concern for the potential inflexibility of one’s future career is associated with a decreased likelihood of majoring in the “hard” STEM fields (physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics). However, we did not find gender differences in this effect, suggesting that men and women who are concerned with the family flexibility of their future career are equally likely to be deterred from STEM.