Karl L. Alexander

First grade and educational attainment by age 22 : A new story

Studies of the persistence of social stratification rely heavily on students’ experience in secondary schools. In this study, outcomes for a randomly selected panel of Baltimore children, followed from age 6 to age 22, demonstrate that first graders’ social contexts and personal resources explain educational attainment levels in early adulthood about as well as do similar resources measured in adolescence. Years of schooling and the highest level of school attempted respond most strongly to family SES, but parental psychological support and the child’s own temperament/disposition had substantial effects on first‐grade academic outcomes. The predictive power of race, gender, SES, and neighborhood quality measured in first grade on educational status at age 22 supports Lucas’s “effectively maintained inequality.”

Schools, Achievement, and Inequality: A Seasonal Perspective

Are there socioeconomic differences in the seasonality of children’s learning over the school year and summer months? The achievement gap across social lines increases during the primary grades, as much research indicates, but descriptive analyses and HLM within-person growth models for a representative panel of Baltimore school children demonstrate that the increase can be traced mainly to the out-of-school environment (i.e., influences situated in home and community). School-year verbal and quantitative achievement gains are comparable for upper socioeconomic status (SES) and lower SES children, but summer gains, when children are out of school, evidence large disparities. During the summer, upper SES children’s skills continue to advance (albeit at a slower rate than during the school year), but lower SES children’s gains, on average, are flat. This seasonal pattern of achievement gains implies that schooling plays an important compensatory role, one that is obscured when achievement is compared on an annual basis, as is typical. Policy implications of the seasonality of learning are discussed, including support for preventive measures over the preschool years and for programs, possibly including calendar reforms and summer school, to support disadvantaged children’s learning year-round.

Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap

Prior research has demonstrated that summer learning rooted in family and community influences widens the achievement gap across social lines, while schooling offsets those family and community influences. In this article, we examine the long-term educational consequences of summer learning differences by family socioeconomic level. Using data from the Baltimore Beginning School Study youth panel, we decompose achievement scores at the start of high school into their developmental precursors, back to the time of school entry in 1st grade. We find that cumulative achievement gains over the first nine years of childrens schooling mainly reflect school-year learning, whereas the high SES-low SES achievement gap at 9th grade mainly traces to differential summer learning over the elementary years. These early out-of-school summer learning differences, in turn, substantially account for achievement-related differences by family SES in high school track placements (college preparatory or not), high school noncompletion, and four-year college attendance. We discuss implications for understanding the bases of educational stratification, as well as educational policy and practice.

Sex Differences in Quantitative SAT Performance: New Evidence on the Differential Coursework Hypothesis

Recent research has questioned socialization explanations for sex differences in mathematics performance. In particular, the hypothesis that differences in the details of males’ and females’ high school programs are responsible for the sizable average difference between the sexes in quantitative Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) performance has been challenged in a recent study byBenbow and Stanley (1980). This research, however, considered sex-linked coursework differences only indirectly and was based on the experiences of an unusual sample of gifted youth. Using a more broadly representative sample, we provide a direct test of the hypothesis that the sex difference in quantitative SAT performance may be due to differences in the pattern of quantitative coursework taken by males and females in high school. We find that the male-female gap in SAT-M performance shrinks considerably when sex differences in quantitative high school coursework are controlled. These findings suggest that increasing females’ rates of enrollment in high level mathematics courses would greatly reduce the sex difference in quantitative SAT performance and that it is premature to reject socialization and experiential explanations for the male-female gap in levels of quantitative performance.

Facilitating the Transition to First Grade: The Nature of Transition and Research on Factors Affecting It.

In this article we describe the nature of the first-grade transition and summarize several studies that have investigated how childrens schooling proceeds over this period. Drawing on Beginning School Study data that include childrens marks and test scores plus information about their parents and schools, we carried out a longitudinal study of a large random sample (N = 790) of children who began first grade in Baltimore in 1982. We studied effects on the transition for children attending full-day rather than half-day kindergarten, of living in different kinds of family arrangements, and of several other circumstances. We found that children with more kindergarten, those whose families included coresident grandmothers, and those who did not change schools between kindergarten and first grade did better over the transition, other things being equal. We close with a list of implications for practice based on what is known about the first-grade transition and offer suggestions for future research.

When expectations work: race and socioeconomic differences in school performance

Why are expectations for future performance realized more often by some people than by others, and why are such differences in the efficacy of performance expectations socially patterned? We hypothesize that differences in attentiveness to performance feedback may be relevant, reasoning that follow-through behaviors will be less well conceived when expectations are formed without regard to evaluation of previous performance. Using data from Baltimore fourth-grade students and their parents, we find that expectations anticipate marks more accurately when recall of prior marks is correct than when it is incorrect. Because errors of recall (mostly on the high side) are more common among lower-SES and minority children and their parents, their school performance is affected most strongly. Research on school attainment processes from a motivational perspective must give more attention to the additional resources that facilitate successful goal attainment, given high expectations. Our perspective focuses on resources internal to the individual, but external constraints also are important. The discussion stresses the need for further work in both areas

Children in Motion: School Transfers and Elementary School Performance

Abstract Moves from one school to another are a common, yet generally neglected, challenge to childrens orderly school adjustment over the beginning-school transition. School transfers were traced...

Contextual Effects in the High School Attainment Process

This paper presents a multidimensional mediation model of composition influences. Ability and social status of student body composition are distinguished, and the interpersonal and social comparison processes by which their effects tend to offset each other are specified. Whereas the contextual effects of ability were found to be negative, those of social status were positive. Since the two contextual variables themselves are positively and strongly correlated, their effects are almost exactly offsetting in the long run. The model is examined on data for a national sample first surveyed in 1955 as high school sophomores and followed up in 1973.

School Sector and Cognitive Performance: When Is a Little a Little?.

Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgores claims regarding the effects of Catholic schools on cognitive achievement have, evoked much controversy. Critics have argued that Catholic schools enroll students of superior academic competency, and that Coleman et al., using cross-sectional testing data, could not distinguish differential sector effectiveness from this selection effect. The first follow-up (1982) of the High School and Beyond base-year sophomore cohort allows a stronger design for studying this issue. We use sophomore test performance to control for input-level differences in competency while predicting senior test performance in several cognitive domains. The omission of such input controls leads to a substantial upward bias in the estimate of Catholic-school effects on achievement. We also show that the so-called common-school effect found by Coleman and his colleagues disappears when appropriate input-level test controls are applied. Our best estimate of the Catholic-school effect on cognitive growth from the sophomore to senior year, using aggregate sophomore-to-senior change in performance as a yardstick, is about two thirds of a years growth. We judge differences of this magnitude to be substantively trivial because they correspond to less than 0.1 standard deviation in test performance. We conclude that sector differences in test performance are too small to warrant the attention they have received.

Access to Higher Education: The Importance of Race, Sex, Social Class, and Academic Credentials

The 30 years following World War II represent a period of unprecedented growth in higher education in the United States. Total enrollments climbed from 1,364,000 just before the War (1939) to 8,560,000 in 1974 (ACE 1964; NCES 1976). Much of this increase was initially due to returning veterans furthering their education and, later, to high postwar birth rates. Additionally, throughout this period there was a marked rise in the proportion of persons reaching 18 who went to college. For example, between 1940 and 1960 the proportion of all 18to 21-year-olds enrolled in college more than doubled (Trow 1961). Both trends appear to have reached a plateau. The birth rate climbed until 1957, leveled off for a number of years, and has been declining since. The leveling effect is only now being felt in higher education. More important, the long-term rise in the percentage of each new age cohort entering college also appears to be ending. The proportion of high school graduates entering college has not increased much in the past decade, rising only slightly between 1960 and 1972 from 41 to 43 percent. In fact, the proportion actually declined at four-year institutions. Thus, it appears that universal higher education will not be achieved in the foreseeable future.1