Do teachers provide students with valuable forms of social capital? Do these forms of social capital increase the likelihood that students complete high school, particularly students who are at risk of failure? Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS:88), we address these questions and examine whether social capital reduces the likelihood of dropping out between the 10th and 12th grades for a cohort of 11,000 adolescents who attended more than 1,000 public and private high schools between 1990 and 1992. We measure social capital in two ways: (a) students’ beliefs about how much their 10th-grade teachers support their efforts to succeed in school and (b) teachers’ reports about whether individual 10th-grade students receive guidance from them about school or personal matters. We find that teachers are an important source of social capital for students. These teacher-based forms of social capital reduce the probability of dropping out by nearly half. However, students who come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and who have had academic difficulties in the past find guidance and assistance from teachers especially helpful. We discuss the implications of these findings for investigations of dropping out, risk, and social capital.
Suspension and expulsion are widely used to exclude students with and without disabilities who present problem behaviors in school, despite contentious legal debate and evidence associating these methods with high ecological stress and problematic developmental outcomes. Using selected participant data ( N = 1,824) from the SEELS study, the study authors entered multilevel predictors into logistic regression analyses to identify factors associated with higher likelihood of exclusion (HLE) among students in three high-exclusion disabilitygroups:emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD), other health impairment (OHI) with a diagnosis of attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and learning disability (LD). When the authors examined disability groups together, HLE was more likely among students with EBD and ADHD compared to students with LD. HLE was also associated with African American ethnicity, older age, male gender, low socio-economic status, multiple school changes, urban schooling, and having parents who expressed low school satisfaction. However, when the authors examined the disability groups individually, predictor profiles varied markedly by disability type.The authors discuss implications for school programs.
This study investigates the frequency, severity, and consequences of sexual harassment in American secondary schools, using 1993 survey data from a nationally representative sample of 1,203 8th to 11th graders in 79 public schools. We found that 83% of girls and 60% of boys receive unwanted sexual attention in school. Except for gender, social background is unrelated to either the probability or the severity of sexual harassment. However, factors characterizing the context of harassment are strongly associated with both occurrence and severity: the harassment experiences of friends, perceptions of the school environment for harassment, and whether the student has himself/herself harassed others. Our results led us to question the simple perpetrator-victim model, as over half of these students reported both harassing and being harassed by their classmates. Considering the many theories posed to explain sexual harassment, we recommend a culturally based theory as most consistent with our results and most helpful for schools in designing appropriate responses. We provide several policy recommendations for secondary schools to address this important and widespread phenomenon.
This article identifies key elements of the “theory of action” embodied in reconstitution reforms and examines them in light of findings acquired from a two-year study that documents what happened when a particular rendition of reconstitution was enacted and implemented. The evidence from this study suggests that the “theory of action” embedded in reconstitution reforms may be seriously, if not fatally flawed. On every critical count, the dominant patterns of implementation ran counter to the major premises (and promises) of the policy. This article considers alternative interpretations of the data and suggests directions for future research.
This study explored the extent to which an 18‐day history and writing curriculum intervention, taught over the course of one year, helped culturally and academically diverse adolescents achieve important disciplinary literacy learning in history. Teachers used a cognitive apprenticeship form of instruction for the integration of historical reading and writing strategies and content learning with the goal of improving students' historical argument writing. The intervention had positive and significant results for each writing outcome. After controlling for variables associated with students' incoming abilities, the researchers found moderate to large effects for all participants. Relative to basic readers in the control condition, those participating in the intervention scored higher in historical writing and writing quality and wrote longer essays; these results translate into effect sizes of .45 on basic readers' historical writing, .32 on their overall writing quality, and .60 on the length of their papers. Teachers implemented the reading and writing curriculum intervention with high levels of implementation fidelity, leading the researchers to explore additional factors that contributed to students' success after accounting for teacher effectiveness. The results indicate further benefits dependent on the degree to which students completed the curriculum.
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