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…

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…

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…

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…

Gifted education is leading an interdisciplinary paradigm shift moving education out of its historic role of entrenching systemic inequities. It is a crucible for pioneering investigations of optimal human development and provides a vehicle for increasing social equity. We review changing conceptions of intelligence, motivation and creativity, and…

This analysis of data from the Partnership for Literacy Study investigates the relationship among achievement, effort, and grades. Certainly, grades reward achievement, the mastery of material by students. Research has also suggested that grades are used to reward students for exerting effort to learn material, even if students fall short of…

To many, it seems obvious which schools are failing--schools whose students perform poorly on achievement tests. But since evaluating schools on achievement mixes the effects of school and nonschool influences, achievement-based evaluation likely underestimates the effectiveness of schools that serve disadvantaged populations. In this article, the…

The paper focuses on the auditing and accountancy paradigm that has dominated educational measurement of pupil performance for the last 20 years in England. The advocates of this minimum competency paradigm do not take account of the results of its dominance. These results include ignoring the heterogeneous complexity of groups within societies…

Drawing on new institutional and market theories, this article derives three hypotheses for the effects of markets on educational organizations: They (1) weaken formal structures, (2) reverse tendencies toward isomorphism, and (3) force schools to recouple and compete via performance indicators. These ideas are investigated with data on private…

This article relies on the concept of educational model to explain why African countries that were colonized by Britain and France experienced significantly different forms of educational expansion after independence. The authors argue that both models represented legitimate variants of world institutional processes that drove the expansion of…

Scholars have debated whether students' enrollment in private schools changes levels of racial segregation across urban school districts. The authors examine this issue by comparing the actual racial composition of schools with the racial composition of school-aged children living in the corresponding attendance areas. They do so by linking maps…

Early in the 20th century, high rates of international migration from Europe and an increasing number of migrants from the South were rapidly changing the composition of cities in the northern United States. Within this dynamic environment, families faced a more complex set of decisions for the preferred economic roles of their members. For…

Few educational problems have received more attention than has the failure to ensure that the nation's classrooms are staffed by qualified teachers. Many states have pushed for more-rigorous preservice teacher education, training, and certification standards. Moreover, a host of recruitment initiatives have attempted to increase the supply of…

Argues that wealth can affect academic achievement, as well as help to explain the gap in black-white test scores and the racial achievement gap. Reveals that wealth affects achievement through its effect on the amount of cultural capital to which a child is exposed. Implications of the findings are discussed. (CAJ)

Discusses effects of Title IX. Argues that, at this point in time, females possess a significant advantage, on average, on most central indicators of educational outcomes. Addresses other factors such as sexual harassment and failure of educational outcomes to transfer immediately to changes beyond the classroom. (CAJ)