Schools and neighborhoods are thought to be two of the most important contextual influences on student academic outcomes. Drawing on a unique data set that permits simultaneous estimation of neighborhood and school contributions to student test score gains, we analyze the distributions of these contributions to consider the relative importance of…

How do proficiency-based accountability systems affect inequality in academic achievement? This article reconciles mixed findings in the literature by demonstrating that three factors jointly determine accountability's impact. First, by analyzing student-level data from a large urban school district, we find that when educators face…

The theories of cultural reproduction and cultural mobility have largely shaped the study of the effects of cultural capital on academic outcomes. Missing in this debate has been a rigorous examination of how children actually acquire cultural capital when it is not provided by their families. Drawing on data from a large-scale experimental study…

Teachers' social networks can play an important role in teacher learning and organizational change. But what influences teachers' networks? Why do some teachers have networks that are likely to support individual and organizational change, while others do not? This study is a first step in answering this question. We focus on how…

This research documents long-run trends in between-country education inequality and proposes a method for doing so that accounts for the ways in which most education variables differ from continuous variables such as income. Historical, national-level estimates of primary schooling enrollment rates and years of completed primary, secondary, and…

This study uses qualitative data to investigate the process of social integration for minority students at a majority white high school and identifies significant gender differences in this process. At this school, integration is the result of processes that occur at two different levels of interaction. On the interpersonal level, African American…

The authors ask whether choice-driven education systems, with comprehensive schools and mass education at the secondary and tertiary level, represented in this article by England and Sweden, provide educational opportunities for ethnic minorities. In studying educational attainment, the authors make a theoretical distinction between mechanisms…

The vast majority of American middle schools and high schools sell what are known as "competitive foods," such as soft drinks, candy bars, and chips, to children. The relationship between consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and snacks and childhood obesity is well established, but it remains unknown whether competitive food sales in schools are…

Persistent school segregation means not only that children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds attend different schools but also that their schools are unequal in performance. This study documents the extent of disparities nationally in school performance between schools attended by whites and Asians compared with those attended by blacks,…

In some American schools, about a fifth of the fathers have spent time in prison during their child's primary education. We examine how variation across schools in the aggregation and concentration of the mass imprisonment of fathers is associated with their own children's intergenerational educational outcomes and "spills over" into the…

Studies of teacher satisfaction suggest that satisfaction is related to both the racial composition and the organizational structure of the schools in which teachers work. In this article, the authors draw from theories of race and organizations to examine simultaneously the effects of school type (traditional public vs. charter) and racial…

Educational under-achievement by a section of the Maori population is a persistent problem for New Zealand. This article is a theoretical examination of the practice and consequences of a culture-based curriculum that is promoted as the solution. We develop the argument that not only is the "cultural solution" at odds with the complex…

This article examines the effects of social capital on the likelihood of dropping out from the compulsory education system (Grades One through Eight) in Turkey. It focuses on the question of whether school-related social capital can provide the means to stay in school in the presence of risk factors such as socioeconomic status, race, or gender…

This article uses Chicago public school closings as a case study for the rise of mayoral control and the decline of democratic participation -- two common responses to stiff competition from global markets -- in urban public schools in the United States. In response to the 2013 Chicago decision to close 50 schools and move 30,000 students, this…

Schooling is now considered the major factor underlying the development of cognitive abilities. However, most studies on the effect of schooling on cognitive development have been conducted in free and generally supportive western environments. The possible variability of schooling effects between educational systems differing in the quality of…