Eric Grodsky

The Structure of Disadvantage: Individual and Occupational Determinants of the Black-White Wage Gap

This study is motivated by the idea that the racial gap in earnings is generated not only by individual differences but also by systematic variation in the occupational structure that attenuates or exacerbates the effects of race. Using data from the 1990 census and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, a hierarchical linear modeling approach is employed that allows the simultaneous exploration of the mechanisms of income inequality operating both within and between occupations. Among private-sector employees, striking evidence shows that racial disparities increase in both absolute and percentage terms as one moves up the occupational earnings hierarchy. The association between average occupational earnings and within-occupation racial disadvantage reveals an overlooked source of racial earnings inequality which constrains the opportunities available to upwardly mobile black men in the private sector. This association cannot be explained by measured individual characteristics, or by the status, demographic composition, or skill demands of occupations. In the public sector, on the other hand, racial inequality in earnings is not systematically associated with average occupational earnings, and is instead more closely tied to individual human capital and occupational placement. The implications of these results are considered and directions for future research are suggested.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same? Prior Achievement Fails to Explain Gender Inequality in Entry Into STEM College Majors Over Time:

This article investigates the empirical basis for often-repeated arguments that gender differences in entrance into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors are largely explained by disparities in prior achievement. Analyses use data from three national cohorts of college matriculates across three decades to consider differences across several indicators of high school math and science achievement at the mean and also at the top of the test distribution. Analyses also examine the different comparative advantages men and women enjoy in math/science versus English/reading. Regardless of how prior achievement is measured, very little of the strong and persistent gender gap in physical science and engineering majors over time is explained. Findings highlight the limitations of theories focusing on gender differences in skills and suggest directions for future research.This article investigates the empirical basis for often-repeated arguments that gender differences in entrance into STEM majors are largely explained by disparities in prior achievement. Analyses use data from three national cohorts of college matriculates across three decades to consider differences across several indicators of high school math and science achievement at the mean and also at the top of the test distribution. Analyses also examine the different comparative advantages men and women enjoy in math/science vs. English/reading. Regardless of how prior achievement is measured, very little of the strong and persistent gender gap in physical science and engineering majors over time is explained. Findings highlight the limitations of theories focusing on gender differences in skills and suggest directions for future research.

Those Who Choose and Those Who Don’t: Social Background and College Orientation

Empirical research on the decision to attend college is predicated largely on the assumption that students make conscious, utility-maximizing decisions about their educational careers. For many students this may not be the case; in fact, the authors find that a large share of students assume from a young age that they will attend college, exhibiting what might be called a college-going habitus. Consistent with critical arguments about how social class is reproduced, the authors find that white, native-born children of college-educated parents are more likely to take college for granted than their less advantaged peers. Students with a college-going habitus are more likely than others to apply to a four-year college by spring of their senior year in high school. Although social origin accounts for some of the association between habitus and college application, both advantaged and disadvantaged students appear to benefit from a college-going habitus.

State high school exit examinations and NAEP long-term trends in reading and mathematics, 1971-2004

In 23 states, members of the high school class of 2008 were required to pass a state high school exit examination (HSEE) to earn regular high school diplomas. Proponents of these policies claim that they improve student academic achievement, although critics argue that they reduce the quality of instruction without raising academic achievement. Using nationally representative data collected to facilitate the analysis of temporal achievement trends, the effects of minimum competency and more difficult state HSEEs on student achievement in mathematics and reading between 1971 and 2004 are evaluated. The potential disparate impacts of state HSEEs on the achievement of students by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and prior academic achievement are examined in this study. No evidence is found for any effects of state HSEEs on achievement in either reading or mathematics at the mean or at the 10th, 20th, 80th, or 90th percentiles of the achievement distribution.

The Declining Significance of Race in College Admissions Decisions

Using 18 years of data from more than 1,300 four‐year colleges and universities in the United States, we investigate the extent to which institutional characteristics and contextual factors influence the propensity of colleges to indicate that they engage in affirmative action in their admissions decisions. Consideration of race/ethnicity in admissions declined sharply after the mid‐1990s, especially at public institutions. Rather than being shaped by specific historical and political contexts, affirmative action in admissions appears to be a widely institutionalized practice in higher education that has been tempered by changes in the policy environment over time.

Diversification and Inequality in Higher Education: A Comparison of Israel and the United States.

This article explores how the structure of higher education in the United States and Israel mediates the relationship among race/ethnicity, social origins, and postsecondary outcomes. On the basis of differences in how the two systems of higher education have developed, the authors anticipated that inequality in college attendance will be greater in Israel, while inequality in the type of college or university one attends will be greater in the United States. They found that students in the United States are more likely to attend college than are their Israeli counterparts. Contrary to their expectations, however, inequality in the chances of attendance is similar across these nations, if not slightly greater in the United States. Inequality in the types of institutions that students attend appears greater in the United States, but the contours of ethnic inequality in college destinations are markedly different across these two contexts.

Mismatch and the Paternalistic Justification for Selective College Admissions.

Although some scholars report that all students are better served by attending more prestigious postsecondary institutions, others have argued that students are better off attending colleges where they are about average in terms of academic ability and suffer worse outcomes if they attend schools that are “out of their league” at which they are “overmatched.” The latter argument is most frequently deployed as a paternalistic justification for ending affirmative action. We take advantage of a natural admissions experiment at the University of California to test the effect of being overmatched for students on the margin of admission to elite universities. Consistent with the mismatch hypothesis, we find that students accumulate more credits when they attend less demanding institutions. However, students do not earn higher grades and are no more or less likely to drop out of schools where they are overmatched and are less likely to drop out than they would have been had they attended less demanding institutions.

Is the Sky Falling? Grade Inflation and the Signaling Power of Grades

Grades are the fundamental currency of our educational system; they signal academic achievement and noncognitive skills to parents, employers, postsecondary gatekeepers, and students themselves. Grade inflation compromises the signaling value of grades and undermines their capacity to achieve the functions for which they are intended. We challenge the “increases in grade point average” definition of grade inflation and argue that grade inflation must be understood in terms of the signaling power of grades. Analyzing data from four nationally representative samples, we find that in the decades following 1972: (a) grades have risen at high schools and dropped at 4-year colleges, in general, and selective 4-year institutions, in particular; and (b) the signaling power of grades has attenuated little, if at all.

Learning in the Shadows and in the Light of Day: A commentary on Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment

Buchmann, Condron and Roscigno argue in their article, “Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment,” that the activities in which students engage to prepare for college entrance exams are forms of shadow education, a means by which more advantaged parents seek to pass their privileged status along to their children. By providing their children with shadow education, advantaged parents help them achieve higher scores than they otherwise would have achieved and further increase the differences between the exam scores of more advantaged and less advantaged children. Using data for the high school class of 1992, BCR demonstrate that (1. children of more affluent parents are more likely than children from lower-income families to take a private test preparation course or enlist the services of a private tutor, but no more likely to engage in other forms of preparation, (2. students who participate in test preparation activities enjoy significantly higher SAT scores than students who do nothing to prepare for the exam, and (3. SAT scores account for some, but not all, of the association between test preparation and the odds of attending an elite college. In this commentary I focus on the main contribution of BCR’s article: the application of the concept of shadow education to SAT and ACT test preparation.1 I argue that BCR’s conception of shadow education is flawed in two important ways. First, some of the activities they consider as “shadow education” are not shadowy at all; they are widely available free of charge to most students. The only true forms of shadow education here are private test preparation courses and private tutors. Second, the way they operationalize the concept of shadow education makes it impossible to discern the extent to which these true forms of shadow education contribute to student test scores or postsecondary destinations. I offer an alternative interpretation of BCR’s results. I suggest that shadow education in preparation for college entrance exams is a relatively ineffective means of improving test scores but nonetheless quite important in terms of its psychic benefits. Expensive test preparation activities such as private classes and tutors allow affluent parents to assert their power over a process largely beyond their control, that of elite college admissions. These efforts appear to do little to increase their children’s chances of gaining admission to an elite college or university, but serve to at least partially assuage the needs of the affluent to feel they have done everything they can to pave the way for their children.

What Skills Can Buy: Transmission of Advantage through Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills.

Parental income and wealth contribute to children’s success but are at least partly endogenous to parents’ cognitive and noncognitive skills. We estimate the degree to which mothers’ skills measured in early adulthood confound the relationship between their economic resources and their children’s postsecondary education outcomes. Analyses of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 suggest that maternal cognitive and noncognitive skills attenuate half of parental income’s association with child baccalaureate college attendance, a fifth of its association with elite college attendance, and a quarter of its association with bachelor’s degree completion. Maternal skills likewise attenuate a third of parental wealth’s association with children’s baccalaureate college attendance, half of its association with elite college attendance, and a fifth of its association with bachelor’s degree completion. Observational studies of the relationship between parents’ economic resources and children’s postsecondary attainments that fail to account for parental skills risk seriously overstating the benefits of parental income and wealth.