1. The Meanings of Race Matter: College Students Learning About Race in a Not-so-Postracial Era

Author: Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero

Source: American Educational Research Journal (Aug. 2016): 819-849,

Abstract:

Given the historical legacies of racial exclusion and disparities within U.S. higher education and contemporary manifestations of racial tensions on college campuses, this study explores the meanings college students make of race within a sociopolitical context often claimed to be “postracial” (i.e., one where race no longer matters). Based on interviews with a sample (n = 40) of undergraduates recruited from two U.S. West Coast public research universities, constructivist grounded theory methods allowed for an emergent understanding of how precollege experiences and campus contexts influenced race-related patterns in students’ experiencing of and learning about race. Such experiences contributed to six patterns of racial meaning (ancestry, culture, concept, embodiment, identity, power) that help explain how college students refute postracial claims and see race mattering (or not) on multiple levels.

 

2.Reinforcing Deficit, Journeying Toward Equity: Cultural Brokering in Family Engagement Initiatives

Author: Ann M. Ishimaru, Kathryn E. Torres, Jessica E. Salvador, Joe Lott II, Dawn M. Cameron Williams, and Christine Tran

Source: American Educational Research Journal (Aug. 2016): 850-882,

Abstract: 

Families are key actors in efforts to improve student learning and outcomes, but conventional engagement efforts often disregard the cultural and social resources of nondominant families. Individuals who serve as cultural brokers play critical, though complex, roles bridging between schools and families. Using an equitable collaboration lens with boundary-spanning theory, this comparative case study examined how individuals enacted cultural brokering within three organizational contexts. Our findings suggest a predominance of cultural brokering consistent with programmatic goals to socialize nondominant families into school-centric norms and agendas. However, formal leadership and boundary-spanning ambiguity enabled more collective, relational, or reciprocal cultural brokering. These dynamics suggest potential stepping stones and organizational conditions for moving toward more equitable forms of family-school collaboration and systemic transformation.

 

3. Will You Stand for Me? Authentic Cariño and Transformative Rites of Passage in an Urban High School

Author: Marnie W. Curry

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 883-918,

Abstract:

This case study documents a small, urban high school that implements firewalks, innovative rites of passage in which low-income, racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse youth publicly reflect on their personal and academic development. Drawing from anthropological scholarship on rites of passage and scholarship on color-conscious care, I examine firewalks through a model of authentic cariño, which incorporates interpersonal and institutional care and emphasizes the dynamic interplay of familial, intellectual, and critical care. Based on analyses of school culture and firewalk enactment, I argue that authentic cariño is essential to nondominant students’ success and that rituals like firewalks productively help youth negotiate emergent cultural identities and develop collective social conscience, reflexivity, and agency.

 

4. Contesting the Public School: Reconsidering Charter Schools as Counterpublics

Author: Terri S. Wilson

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 919-952,

Abstract:

Although technically open to all, charter schools often emphasize distinctive missions that appeal to particular groups of students and families. These missions, especially ones focusing on ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences, also contribute to segregation between schools. Such schools raise normative questions about the aims of education. Are they a troubling retreat from an integrated public school system? Or are they new public spaces relevant to the needs of certain communities? Through a case study of one potentially counterpublic school, I describe how this school embodied aspects of public-ness. I argue that a counterpublic framework—in emphasizing shared decision making, expanded discursive space, and a publicist orientation—offers resources for considering under what circumstances distinctive schools might serve public goals.

 

5. Variation Across Hispanic Immigrant Generations in Parent Social Capital, College-Aligned Actions, and Four-Year College Enrollment

Author: Sarah Ryan and Robert K. Ream

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 953-986,

Abstract:

Not beginning college at a four-year institution has been demonstrated as one key obstacle to equitable rates of bachelor’s degree attainment among Hispanic individuals in the United States. Drawing on nationally representative longitudinal data and social capital theory, this research investigates the process of four-year college enrollment among different immigrant generations of Hispanic adolescents. Of particular interest is how parents of Hispanic youth use resources embedded in their social networks to promote their children’s engagement in college-aligned actions and whether this process varies according to student immigrant generation status. Results suggest that regardless of immigrant generation, Hispanic students who take instrumental steps during high school that are aligned with admission to college have a greater probability of initially enrolling in a four-year institution. Importantly, however, the influence of different forms of parent social capital during the process of four-year college enrollment varies markedly according to student immigrant generation.

 

6. Geography of College Opportunity: The Case of Education Deserts

Author: Nicholas W. Hillman

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 987-1021,

Abstract:

When students choose where to attend college, they often stay in close proximity to home and work. Much of the college choice literature, however, does not engage with the importance of geography in shaping educational destinations. Using county and commuting zone data from various federal sources, this study finds that the number of local colleges varies along lines of race and class. Communities with large Hispanic populations and low educational attainment have the fewest alternatives nearby, while White and Asian communities tend to have more. These can result in education deserts, or places where opportunities richly available for some communities are rare (or even nonexistent) in others.

 

7. Investigating the Role of Instructional Rounds in the Development of Social Networks and District-Wide Improvement

Author: Thomas Hatch, Kathryn Hill, and Rachel Roegman

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 1022-1053,

Abstract:

In this article, we explore how organizational routines involving instructional rounds—collective, structured observations and reflections on classroom practice—might contribute to the development of social networks among administrators and support a common, district-wide focus on instruction. Building on work on communities of practice, we consider some of the mechanisms through which rounds might contribute to the development of the relationships, common language, and shared understanding integral to building social capital. Our analysis focuses on the evolution of social networks among administrators in three districts. While this initial analysis does not find a consistent association between engagement in rounds and the development of social networks that have the characteristics of communities of practice, it points to several key factors that need to be taken into account in order to use rounds strategically to support the development of connections among administrators who may not normally come into contact with one another.

 

8. Revisiting the Relationship Between International Assessment Outcomes and Educational Production: Evidence From a Longitudinal PISA-TIMSS Sample

Author: Martin Carnoy, Tatiana Khavenson, Prashant Loyalka, William H. Schmidt, and Andrey Zakharov

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 1054-1085,

Abstract:

International assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), are being used to recommend educational policies to improve student achievement. This study shows that the cross-sectional estimates behind such recommendations may be biased. We use a unique data set from one country that applied the PISA mathematics test in 2012 in ninth grade to all students who had taken the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) test in 2011 and collected information on students’ teachers in ninth grade. These data allowed us to more precisely estimate the effects of classroom variables on students’ PISA performance. Our results suggest that the positive roles of teacher “quality” and “opportunity to learn” in improving student performance are much more modest than claimed in PISA documents.

 

9. Easy in, Easy out: Are Alternatively Certified Teachers Turning Over at Increased Rates?

Author: Christopher Redding and Thomas M. Smith

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 1086-1125,

Abstract:

Alternative certification programs are now commonplace in the credentialing of new teachers. We complement the growing evidence base for these teachers by exploring their turnover patterns in four waves of the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). We report on descriptive evidence of growing differences in the characteristics of alternatively and traditionally certified teachers and the schools in which they teach. Controlling for factors that predict higher turnover, we find that by the 2007–2008 school year, alternatively certified teachers were still more likely than traditionally certified teachers to leave the profession. We find some evidence that an increase in the number of organizational supports for new teachers may reduce the likelihood of turnover.

 

10. Childhood Geographies and Spatial Justice: Making Sense of Place and Space-Making as Political Acts in Education

Author: Stephanie Jones, Jaye Johnson Thiel, Denise Dávila, Elizabeth Pittard, James F. Woglom, Xiaodi Zhou, Taryrn Brown, and Marianne Snow

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 1126-1158,

Abstract:

This post-qualitative research analyzes the spatialized practices of young people within a working-class community and how those guided the opening and facilitating of a local community center. Seeing place-making as a social and political act, the authors were inspired by Heath’s classic study and argument that children’s education might be better served if educators understood and built on their community-based language practices. Writing through theories of new materialism, spatiality, and children’s geographies, we build an argument for spatial justice by considering the ways educational scholars and educators might understand and build on children’s community-based spatial practices.

 

11. Income Segregation Between Schools and School Districts

Author: Ann Owens, Sean F. Reardon, and Christopher Jencks

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 1159-1197,

Abstract:

Although trends in the racial segregation of schools are well documented, less is known about trends in income segregation. We use multiple data sources to document trends in income segregation between schools and school districts. Between-district income segregation of families with children enrolled in public school increased by over 15% from 1990 to 2010. Within large districts, between-school segregation of students who are eligible and ineligible for free lunch increased by over 40% from 1991 to 2012. Consistent with research on neighborhood segregation, we find that rising income inequality contributed to the rise in income segregation between schools and districts during this period. The rise in income segregation between both schools and districts may have implications for inequality in students’ access to resources that bear on academic achievement.

 

12. Early School Adjustment and Educational Attainment

Author: Katherine Magnuson, Greg J. Duncan, Kenneth T. H. Lee, and Molly W. Metzger

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 1198-1228,

Abstract:

Although school attainment is a cumulative process combining mastery of both academic and behavioral skills, most studies have offered only a piecemeal view of the associations between middle-childhood capacities and subsequent schooling outcomes. Using a 20-year longitudinal data set, this study estimates the association between children’s academic skills, antisocial behaviors, and attention problems—all averaged across middle childhood—and their long-term educational outcomes. After adjusting for family and individual background measures, we find that high average levels of math and reading achievement, and low average levels of antisocial behavior problems, are positively associated with later attainment. Associations between attention problems and attainment are small. Associations are attenuated somewhat when sibling differences in these skills and behaviors are related to sibling differences in attainment outcomes.

 

13. Detracking and Tracking Up: Mathematics Course Placements in California Middle Schools, 2003–2013

Author: Thurston Domina, Paul Hanselman, NaYoung Hwang, and Andrew McEachin

Source: American Educational Research Journal August 2016 53: 1229-1266,

Abstract:

Between 2003 and 2013, the proportion of California eighth graders enrolled in algebra or a more advanced course nearly doubled to 65%. In this article, we consider the organizational processes that accompanied this curricular intensification. Facing a complex set of accountability, institutional, technical/functional, and internal political pressures, California schools responded to the algebra-for-all effort in diverse ways. While some schools detracked by enrolling all eighth graders in algebra, others “tracked up,” creating more advanced geometry opportunities while increasing algebra enrollments. These responses created a new differentiated course structure that is likely to benefit advantaged students. Consistent with the effectively maintained inequality hypothesis, we find that detracking occurred primarily in disadvantaged schools while “tracking up” occurred primarily in advantaged schools.