The authors examine whether standards based accountability reforms of the past two decades have closed the achievement gap among public and private high school students. They analyzed data from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) to examine sector differences in high school achievement in the era of standards based reforms. The authors found…

Although many recognize that social and behavioral skills play an important role in educational stratification, no studies have attempted to estimate teachers' effects on these outcomes. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), the authors estimate teacher effects on social and behavioral skills as well…

Scholars hypothesize that both neighborhood and school contexts influence educational attainment, but few have considered both contexts simultaneously. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the author analyzes how school and neighborhood contexts are jointly related to high school and college graduation. She finds…

Among early adolescents (10-12 years) in the Netherlands, this study examined the academic self-concept in terms of the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE). The BFLPE implies that students in classes where the average achievement is low will have a higher academic self-concept than equally achieving students in classes where the average…

Over the past several decades, research has documented strong relationships between social class and children's cognitive abilities. These initial cognitive differences, which are substantial at school entry, increase as children progress through school. Despite the robust findings associated with this research, authors have generally neglected…

The authors use nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K) to identify variables measured in the fall of 1998 (when the sample's students were in kindergarten) that predict special education placement by the spring of 2004 (when most students were finishing fifth grade).…

The transition to high school is a critical stage in students' academic trajectories and can be especially difficult for middle school students who struggle academically. Starting high school on a low academic track and with low academic performance often leads to dropping out of high school. This study investigates what might protect academically…

Prior research has not examined how much of the socioeconomic status (SES) advantage on schooling outcomes is related to participation in extracurricular activities. The authors explore the SES advantage and extracurricular participation in elementary school-aged children, with a focus on noncognitive skills. The authors argue that noncognitive…

Cultural capital has been an important but often elusive concept in the study of educational processes and social class reproduction. The authors suggest that this is partly because a country's educational system and ways of evaluating students at different educational transitions set the context for the mechanisms through which embodied and…

This paper draws on qualitative data exploring the experiences of first-generation middle-class Black Caribbean-heritage parents, their own parents, and their children. We focus on the different ways in which race and class intersect in shaping attitudes towards education and subsequent educational practices. We argue that the nature of racism has…

The global movement of people alters our understandings of social mobility. Here, I draw on ethnographic data collected since January 2011 and utilize the notion of "assemblage" to document and analyze how disparate people, their material objects, and discursive practices are brought together to render refugees as educable, productive,…

This article is a brief personal reflection on the state of research into the relation between education and social mobility. Quantitative methods are both essential and advancing in this field. Sociologists seek scientific solutions but achieve ethical neutrality only with difficulty because all are tempted to bias from social and political…

This article explores the perceived role of UK international education as foreign cultural capital, obtained outside the UK, in facilitating middle-class social mobility. Drawing on interviews with students in Malaysia, it extends Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital to explain understandings of the rewards and limitations of undertaking UK…

This paper focuses on the role of curricular content on social mobility, an issue largely neglected by social mobility studies. Using data from the National Child Development Study we investigate the extent to which secondary school curricula account for social class differences in the chances of entering into the service class and avoiding a…

This paper problematizes dominant discourses of social mobility. It begins by discussing social mobility from a philosophical perspective before examining current policies on social mobility in the United Kingdom, drawing on data from both recent mobility studies and the contemporary labour market. I then broaden out the discussion by exploring…