This study examines how high school boys' and girls' academic effort, in the form of math coursetaking, is influenced by members of their social contexts. The authors argue that adolescents' social contexts are defined, in part, by clusters of students (termed "local positions") who take courses that differentiate them from others. Using course transcript data from the recent Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study, the authors employ a new network algorithm to identify local positions in 78 high schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Incorporating the local positions into multilevel models of math coursetaking, the authors find that girls are highly responsive to the social norms in their local positions, which contributes to homogeneity within and heterogeneity between local positions.The adolescent is choosing how to invest time, and … the choices depend greatly on the social system surrounding them. (Coleman 1996, p. 346) This study examines how high school boys' and girls' academic effort, in the form of mathematics coursetaking, is influenced by their social contexts. The literature on sociology of education has established how adolescent coursetaking is influenced by schools' decisions and resource allocations (e.g., Natriello, Pallas, and Alexander 1989;Hallinan 1991;Useem 1992). Other sociologists have described education, independent of the school's function as a social institution, in terms of status attainment, arguing that adolescents and young adults are influenced by their parents' education, occupations, and aspirations (Sewell and Hauser 1976;Steelman and Powell 1991). Complementing status attainment theory, standard economic models directly address parents' motivations for investing in their children for long- (Adelman 1999). But, as implied by Coleman's quote in the epigraph above, while adolescents may be influenced by adults, including school faculty, administrators, and parents, they may also respond to their peers in making short-and longterm educational decisions (see also Sizer 1984;Crosnoe, Cavanagh, and Elder 2003; RiegleCrumb, Farkas, and Muller 2006). In this article we examine how an adolescent may be influenced in particular by the cluster of students with whom she takes courses-which we term the local position. NIH Public AccessWe focus specifically on effort in the domain of math coursetaking for four reasons. First, math has gained increasing attention in the popular press (e. Simpkins, Davis-Kean, and Eccles 2006) for its potential contributions to society. Second, math is an important gateway to other advanced courses and college entry and therefore to pursuing human capital (Sells 1973;Adelman 1999;Simpkins et al. 2006;Sadler and Tai 2007). Third, math has long been a key to the social organization of the school, as it is used to delineate academic tracks (Stevenson, Schiller, and Schneider 1994;Gamoran and Hannigan 2000;Lucas and Good 2001). Fourth, although math coursetaking has been the focus of considerable empirical study, ...

No abstract

No abstract

The linkage between family structure and adolescents' academic experiences is part of a larger, dynamic process unfolding over time. To investigate this phenomenon, this study drew on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study. Logistic regressions revealed that family structure at birth predicted students' academic status in math in the ninth grade, and multinomial regressions revealed that family instability, along with curricular location in the ninth grade, parenting behaviors, and adolescents' adjustment and aspirations, distinguished those who completed higher-level math by the end of high school from those who did not but still graduated from high school and from those who dropped out of high school.The life-course paradigm views human development as an interplay between individuals' developmental trajectories and the trajectories of their significant others (Elder 1998). One of the most intuitive examples of this linked-lives principle is the parentchild relationship. Parents, through the choices and decisions they make for themselves and their children, influence how their children grow and develop over time (Furstenberg et al. 1999).This view of the linked lives of parents and children offers unique insights into a hotly contested issue in contemporary American society: the implications of changes in family structure for adolescents' well-being, including adolescents' academic experiences. A large, multidisciplinary literature has examined the association between family structure and adolescents' academic outcomes, documenting that young people who live in "alternative" families (i.e., reside with a single parent or a stepparent) have more problems in school than do those who live in two-biological-parent families McLanahan 1991, 1994;Coleman 1988;DeLeire and Kalil 2002;Hill, Yeung, and Duncan 2001;McLanahan and Sandefur 1994;Schiller, Khmelkov, and Wang 2002;Wojtkiewicz 1993). The image that emerges from these snapshots of the effects of family structure suggests something more dynamic about family life and its role in education. Specifically, one of the most significant trajectories of parents' lives, their marital histories, is closely connected to one of the most significant trajectories of their children's lives, their academic careers.Address correspondence to Shannon Cavanagh, Population Research Center, University of Texas, 1 University Station G1800, Austin, TX, 78712; scavanagh@mail.la.utexas.edu. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptWorking from a life-course perspective, the general goal of the study presented here was to examine whether this dynamic aspect of linked lives exists and, if so, to explore the reasons why it does. We addressed this goal through four objectives. First, we constructed measures of family-structure history that reflect the number of family transitions that children experienced from birth through early adolescence, as well as the family ...

This article explores the relationship between nations' level of economic development and the influence of adolescents' social backgrounds on their academic achievement. Using data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the authors found that the positive effect of higher parents' education on middleschool students' mathematics test scores is remarkably consistent among the 34 nations examined. In contrast, the relative advantage of living in a traditional family for mathematics achievement varies systematically between nations, being significantly greater in those with stronger economies. Although the influence of socioeconomic status on educational stratification does not appear to change, the deepening academic disadvantage of living with only one natural parent in more developed nations may result from marginalization of families in these societies.During the past 25 years, many sociologists and policy makers became concerned with the relatively poor academic performance of American school children, which has been partially attributed to an increasing number of nontraditional famDepartment of Educational Administration and Policy Studies, State University of New York, Education 344, Albany, NY 12222 (schiller@csc.albany.edu).

Frank's [Frank, K.A., 1995. Identifying cohesive subgroups. Social Networks 17, 27-56] clustering technique for one-mode social network data is adapted to identify positions in affiliation networks by drawing on recent extensions of p * models to two-mode data. The algorithm is applied to the classic Deep South data on southern women and the social events in which they participated with results comparable to other algorithms. Monte Carlo simulations are used to generate sampling distributions to test for the presence of clustering in new data sets and to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. The algorithm and simulation results are then applied to high school students' transcripts from one school from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA) extension of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

In response to the national push to raise academic performance of all students, most states have adopted policies designed to raise academic standards, monitor progress toward those standards, and hold schools and students responsible for attaining them. Given the complex nature of the educational process, these policies are likely to have mixed effects on both general levels of attainment and stratification based on race or ethnicity and social class. Using nationally representative longitudinal data and hierarchical linear modeling, this article explored the association between students' mathematics course work and states' high school graduation requirements and assessment or accountability policies. We found that students in states with more graduation requirements tended to enroll in higher level mathematics courses as freshmen and persist to take more advanced level courses. Similar trends were also found for students in states that link test performance to consequences for schools. Extensive testing, however, had little effect on course taking except to increase differences based on socioeconomic status. In contrast, differences between racial or ethnic groups tended to be smaller in states where test performance was linked to consequences for students.

Purpose: This multiple case study investigated district leaders' orientations and strategies as their elementary schools proceeded with state-mandated implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). We identified differences between schools achieving above-predicted outcomes on state CCSS assessments ("odds-beaters") and schools achieving predicted outcomes ("typical performers"). Theory: The implementation of multiple race-to-the-top (RTTT) innovations recommends a theoretical hybrid consisting of policy implementation theory, leadership theory, organizational change theory, and organizational learning theory, especially learning-focused leadership strategies such as bridging, brokering, and buffering strategies for crafting coherence across organizational boundaries. (1) identify themes that might differentiate the two kinds of sample schools and their district leaders. Findings: District leaders for odds-beating schools anticipated the state's policy innovations and developed organizational capacity for RTTT innovation implementation. Leaders permitted CCSS adaptations and they employed bridging, brokering, and buffering strategies to craft coherence and facilitate organizational learning and improvement. Conclusions: Odds-beating district leaders played pivotal roles in developing organizational readiness and implementation capacity. Whereas the RTTT agenda in typical districts amounted to a second-order, disruptive change, the odds-beating leaders in this study were instrumental in making this same agenda a first-order change.