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Does experience in school increase or reduce social inequality in skills? Sociologists have long debated this question. Drawing from the counterfactual account of causality, we propose that the impact of going to school on a given skill depends on the quality of the instructional regime a child will experience at school compared with the quality of the instructional regime the child would receive if not at school. Children vary in their benefit from new instruction, and current skill increases this benefit. We hypothesize that the expansion of free, universal schooling promotes social equality in part by equalizing access to school, but also because disadvantaged children benefit more from access. However, we predict that this equalizing effect will be more pronounced for younger children than for older children. To test these hypotheses, we review empirical evidence regarding the impact of (a) increasing access to universal kindergarten and preschool, (b) interrupting schooling with the summer recess, (c) extending the school day, and (d ) extending years of compulsory schooling. We consider implications for the potential of school reform to reduce educational inequality. 443 Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2015.41:443-470. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by Cambridge University on 08/18/15. For personal use only.

Homicide is the second leading cause of death for young people, and exposure to violence has a negative impact on youth mental health, academic performance, and relationships. We demonstrate that youth violence, including bullying, gang violence, and self-directed violence, increasingly occurs in the online space. We review the literature on violence and online social media, and show that while some forms of online violence are limited to Internet-based interactions, others are directly related to face-to-face acts of violence. Central to our purpose is uncovering the real-world consequences of these online events, and using this information to design effective prevention and intervention strategies. We discuss several limitations of the existing literature, including inconsistent definitions for some forms of online violence, and an overreliance on descriptive data. Finally, we acknowledge the constantly evolving landscape of online social media, and discuss implications for the future of social media and youth violence research. Graphical abstractYouth violence | Social media | Gang violence | Cyber-suicide | Electronic dating Article:

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Expressions of racism in the post-Civil Rights Era are expected to be more covert than overt and more unconscious than conscious. But some internet-based communication takes place in technological contexts that are not bound by the same norms as face-to-face interactions, and can structure more explicit presentations of racist ideologies. I explore the changing expressions of racism in online spaces and their effects on students of color using in-depth interviews with 27 undergraduate students of color and their reactions to and interpretations of an online, anonymous student forum. I argue that covert racism is unmasked in online environments, and that exposure to unmasked racial ideologies can challenge students’ racial worldviews, adaptive coping responses to racism, relationships to White students and institutions, and dominant racial narratives.