Tag Archives | Educational Inequality

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Teachers are the evaluators of academic merit. Identifying if their assessments are fair or biased by student-ascribed status is critical for equal opportunity but empirically challenging, with mixed previous findings. We test status characteristics beliefs, statistical discrimination, and cultural capital theories with a pre-registered factorial experiment on a large sample of Spanish pre-service teachers (n = 1, 717). This design causally identifies, net of ability, the impact of student-ascribed characteristics on teacher short- and long-term assessments, improving prior studies’ theory testing, confounding, and power. Findings unveil teacher bias in an essay grading task favoring girls and highbrow cultural capital, aligning with status characteristics and cultural capital theories. Results on teachers’ long-term expectations indicate statistical discrimination against boys, migrant origin, and working-class students under uncertain information. Unexpectedly, ethnic discrimination changes from teachers favoring native origin in long-term expectations to migrant origin in short-term evaluations, suggesting compensatory grading. We discuss the complex roots of discrimination in teacher assessments as an educational (in)equality mechanism.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Carlos J. Gil-Hernández∗: Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications, University of Florence
∗Corresponding author, E-mail: carlos.gil@unifi.it

Irene Pañeda-Fernández: WZB Berlin Social Science Center
E-mail: irene.paneda@wzb.eu

Leire Salazar: Institute for Public Goods and Policies, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
E-mail: leire.salazar@cchs.csic.es

Jonatan Castaño Muñoz: Departamento de Didática y Organización Educativa, Universidad de Sevilla
E-mail: jcastanno@us.es

Acknowledgements: This project has been funded through the JRC Centre for Advanced Studies and the project Social Classes in the Digital Age (DIGCLASS). Jonatan Castaño Muñoz acknowledges the support of a) the ‘Ramón y Cajal’ grant RYC2020-030157 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ESF Investing in your future”; and b) University of Seville “VI University research plan” (VI plan propio de investigación). We thank Lilian Weikert, William Foley, Zbigniew Karpiñski, David Martínez de Lafuente, Alberto López, and Mario Spiezio for their valuable feedback and support. We also thank the participants at the following venues where we presented earlier versions of the article: the ‘Experiments on Social Inequality’ Workshop at Sciences Po-LIEPP, the ‘Colloquium of the Migration and Diversity Department’ at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre, the ECSR Thematic Conference ‘Effort and Social Inequality’ and ‘2024 IC3JM Conference’ at Carlos III-Juan March Institute of Social Sciences, the FES ‘Inequality and Social Stratification Committee Workshop’ in Oviedo, the ‘Education and Social Inequalities Seminar’ at University of Sevilla, the ‘CLIC Seminar Series’ at the European University Institute, the SISEC conference in Cagliari, and the FES National Congress in Sevilla.

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Replication Package: Data and replication code are publicly accessible at the GitHub repository: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.12666534. The hypotheses and research design were publicly pre-registered with a pre-analysis plan (PAP) before data collection and analysis at the Open Science Foundation repository: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DZB3S.

Citation: J. Gil-Hernández, Carlos, Irene Pañeda-Fernández, Leire Salazar, Jonatan Castaño Muñoz, 2024. “Teacher Bias in Assessments by Student Ascribed Status: A Factorial Experiment on Discrimination in Education” Sociological Science 11: 743-776.
Received: January 6, 2024
Accepted: July 9, 2024
Editors: Ari Adut, Stephen Vaisey
DOI: 10.15195/v11.a27

Is Denmark a Much More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States? Comment on Andrade and Thomsen, "Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Denmark and the United States" (2018)

By Parker Webservices on November 17, 2021 in Articles

Kristian Bernt Karlson

Sociological Science November 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a17

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I evaluate Andrade and Thomsen (A&T)’s (2018) study, which concludes that Denmark is significantly more educationally mobile than the United States. I make three observations. First, A&T overstate the difference in educational mobility between Denmark and the United States. Both in international comparison and compared with differences in intergenerational income mobility, A&T’s reported country differences in educational mobility are negligible. For example, whereas income mobility estimates reported in the literature differ by 300 to 600 percent between the two countries, the corresponding educational mobility estimates that A&T report differ by 10 to 20 percent. Second, I provide evidence suggesting that A&T’s use of crude categorical education measures leads them to overstate these negligible differences. Third, A&T’s empirical analyses of the U.S. data contain several statistical and data-related flaws, some so severe that they potentially undermine the credibility of their analyses. In sum, A&T’s results are perfectly consistent with the existence of a mobility paradox very similar to what Sweden–United States comparisons show: although Denmark and the United States are dissimilar with respect to income mobility, they are similar with respect to educational mobility. Understanding the nature of this paradox should be a key concern for future mobility research.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kristian Bernt Karlson: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: kbk@soc.ku.dk

Citation: Karlson, Kristian Bernt. 2021. “Is Denmark a Much More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States? Comment on Andrade and Thomsen, ‘Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Denmark and the United States’ (2018).” Sociological Science 8: 346-358.
Received: June 11, 2021
Accepted: July 11, 2021
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Filiz Garip
DOI: 10.15195/v8.a17

School Choice, Neighborhood Change, and Racial Imbalance Between Public Elementary Schools and Surrounding Neighborhoods

By Parker Webservices on March 25, 2020 in Articles

Kendra Bischoff, Laura Tach

Sociological Science March 25, 2020
10.15195/v7.a4

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The expansion of school choice in recent years has potentially generated demographic imbalances between traditional public schools and their residential attendance zones. Demographic imbalances emerge from selective opting out, when families of certain racial and/or ethnic backgrounds disproportionately choose not to enroll in their neighborhood-based public schools. In this article, we use a unique data set of school attendance zones in 21 large U.S. school districts to show how changes in neighborhood conditions and school choice options influence race-specific enrollments in locally zoned public elementary schools from 2000 to 2010. We find that the presence of more school-choice options generates racial imbalances between public elementary schools and their surrounding neighborhoods, but this association differs by type of choice-based alternative. Private schools, on average, reduce the presence of non-Hispanic white students in locally zoned schools, whereas charter schools may reduce the presence of nonwhite students in locally zoned schools. Increases in neighborhood-school racial imbalances from 2000 to 2010 were concentrated in neighborhoods undergoing increases in socioeconomic status, suggesting that parents’ residential and school decisions are dynamic and sensitive to changing neighborhood conditions. Selective opting out has implications for racial integration in schools and the distribution of familial resources across educational contexts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kendra Bischoff: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: kbischoff@cornell.edu

Laura Tach: Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University
E-mail: lmt88@cornell.edu

Acknowledgements: This project was funded by the Cornell Center for Social Sciences. Bischoff was also supported by a National Academy of Education–Spencer Foundation fellowship. We would like to thank Salvatore Saporito for generously sharing the school attendance boundary data he collected for the 1999–2000 school year. This project would not have been possible without it. We also thank Chenoa Flippen, Peter Rich, Steven Alvarado, Matt Hall, Anna Haskins, and Erin York Cornwell for their comments on previous versions of this article.

Citation: Bischoff, Kendra, and Laura Tach. 2020. “School Choice, Neighborhood Change, and Racial Imbalance Between Public Elementary Schools and Surrounding Neighborhoods.” Sociological Science 7: 75-99.
Received: July 1, 2019
Accepted: January 16, 2020
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
DOI: 10.15195/v7.a4

The Social Stratification of Environmental and Genetic Influences on Education: New Evidence Using a Register-Based Twin Sample

By Parker Webservices on February 20, 2019 in Articles

Tina Baier, Volker Lang

Sociological Science, February 20, 2019
10.15195/v6.a6

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The relative importance of genes and shared environmental influences on stratification outcomes has recently received much attention in the literature. We focus on education and the gene-environmental interplay. Specifically, we investigate whether—as proposed by the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis—genetic influences are more important in advantaged families. We argue that the social stratification of family environments affects children’s chances to actualize their genetic potential. We hypothesize that advantaged families provide more child-specific inputs, which enhance genetic expression, whereas the rearing environments of children in disadvantaged families are less adapted to children’s individual abilities, leading to a suppression of genetic potential. We test this relationship in Germany, which represents an interesting case due to its highly selective schooling system characterized by early tracking and the broad coverage of part-time schools. We use novel data from the TwinLife panel, a population-register–based sample of twins and their families. Results of ACE-variance decompositions support the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis: Shared environmental influences on education matter only in disadvantaged families, whereas genetic influences are more important in advantaged families. Our findings support the growing literature on the importance of the gene-environmental interplay and emphasize the role of the family environment as a trigger of differential genetic expression.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Tina Baier: Department Educational Decisions and Processes, Migration, Returns to Education, Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
E-mail: tina.baier@lifbi.de

Volker Lang: Department of Sociology, Bielefeld University
E-mail: volker.lang@uni-bielefeld.de

Acknowledgements: This article was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (awarded to Martin Diewald [DI 759/11-1], Rainer Riemann [RI 595/8-1], and Frank M. Spinath [SP 610/6-1]) and the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR) internship grant. We received excellent comments from participants in the ECSR conference in Milan in August 2017, the “Reading Group” held at the University of Oxford in November 2017, and the “Social Inequality and Social Demography” colloquium held at Humboldt University of Berlin in January 2018. We also would like to thank especially Martin Diewald, Anette Fasang, and the editors for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of the article.

Citation: Baier, Tina, and Volker Lang. 2019. “The Social Stratification of Environmental and Genetic Influences on Education: New Evidence Using a Register-Based Twin Sample.” Sociological Science 6: 143-171.
Received: September 25, 2018
Accepted: December 31, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
DOI: 10.15195/v6.a6

Inequality of Educational Opportunity in East and West Germany: Convergence or Continued Differences?

By Parker Webservices on January 10, 2019 in Articles

Markus Klein, Katherin Barg, Michael Kühhirt

Sociological Science, January 10, 2019
10.15195/v6.a1

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Diversity in education systems, and broader political and economic conditions, are commonly credited with international variation in inequality of educational opportunity (IEO). Comparing East and West Germany before reunification allows us to investigate whether vastly different political, economic, and educational systems led to differences in IEO. Postreunification, East Germany adopted the West’s systems and experienced an economic recession. IEO had been smaller in East Germany than in West Germany but was on an upward trajectory before reunification. After 1990, IEO in East Germany converged to the West German level as a result of decreased IEO in the west and increasing levels in the east. Postreunification convergence suggests that differences in political context and education policy are crucial for IEO.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Markus Klein: School of Education, University of Strathclyde
E-mail: markus.klein@strath.ac.uk

Katherin Barg: Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter
E-mail: k.barg@exeter.ac.uk

Michael Kühhirt: Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne
E-mail: michael.kuehhirt@uni-koeln.de

Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants in the German Life History Study (GLHS), the German General Social Survey (GGSS), and the German Microcensus (GMC) for providing their information; the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin for collecting and managing the GLHS data; the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences for collecting and managing the GGSS data; and the statistical offices of the Länder under the supervision of the Federal Statistical Office for collecting and managing the GMC data. The authors would also like to thank Walter Müller, Andreas Hadjar, and Ian Rivers for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript; Julia Däumling for the excellent research assistance; and Matilda Klein for the copyediting. Sole responsibility for any remaining errors lies with the authors.

Citation: Klein, Markus, Katherin Barg, and Michael Kühhirt. 2018. “Inequality of Educational Opportunity in East and West Germany: Convergence or Continued Differences?” Sociological Science 6: 1-26.
Received: October 15, 2018
Accepted: November 21, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
DOI: 10.15195/v6.a1

Cultural Capital and Educational Inequality: A Counterfactual Analysis

By Parker Webservices on December 12, 2018 in Articles

Mads Meier Jæger, Kristian Karlson

Sociological Science, December 12, 2018
10.15195/v5.a33

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We use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) data and a counterfactual approach to test the macro-level implications of cultural reproduction and cultural mobility theory. Our counterfactual analyses show that the observed socioeconomic gradient in children’s educational attainment in the NLSY79 data would be smaller if cultural capital was more equally distributed between children whose parents are of low socioeconomic status (SES) and those whose parents are of high SES. They also show that hypothetically increasing cultural capital among low-SES parents would lead to a larger reduction in the socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment than reducing it among high-SES parents. These findings are consistent with cultural mobility theory (which argues that low-SES children have a higher return to cultural capital than high-SES children) but not with cultural reproduction theory (which argues that low-SES children have a lower return to cultural capital). Our analysis contributes to existing research by demonstrating that the unequal distribution of cultural capital shapes educational inequality at the macro level.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Mads Meier Jæger: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: mmj@soc.ku.dk

Kristian Karlson: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: kbk@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgements: We presented this article at the 2015 Research Committee 28 meeting at Tilburg University and at several research seminars at the University of Copenhagen. We thank the participants at these events for their excellent comments. The research leading to the results presented in this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) and ERC grant 312906.

Citation: Jæger, Mads Meier, and Kristian Karlson. 2018. “Cultural Capital and Educational Inequality: A Counterfactual Analysis.” Sociological Science 5: 775-795.
Received: September 5, 2018
Accepted: November 7, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
DOI: 10.15195/v5.a33

Competition in the Family: Inequality between Siblings and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Advantage

By Parker Webservices on May 17, 2018 in Articles

Michael Grätz

Sociological Science, May 17, 2018
10.15195/v5.a11

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Research on educational mobility is concerned with inequalities between families. Differences in innate abilities and parental responses lead, however, to educational differences between siblings. If parental responses vary by family socioeconomic background, within-family inequality can affect between-family inequality (i.e., educational mobility). This study uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) to test whether sibling similarity in education varies by family socioeconomic background. In addition, I test whether the effects of birth order, birth spacing, and maternal age on education vary by family background. Results show that sibling similarity in education is similar in low– and high–socioeconomic status families. The negative influences of a higher birth order and a younger maternal age on educational attainment, however, are concentrated in socioeconomically disadvantaged families. These findings suggest that socioeconomically advantaged families do not generally compensate for ability differences between their children but that they compensate for disadvantageous life events.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Michael Grätz: Nuffield College, University of Oxford; Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University
E-mail: michael.gratz@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Acknowledgements: I thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for supporting my research through a PhD scholarship. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 320116 for the research project FamiliesAndSocieties. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the European Consortium for Sociological Research conference in Tilburg, the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Boston, the ISA RC28 on Social Stratification and Mobility meeting in Budapest, the SOEP User Conference in Berlin, and at workshops in Zürich and Berlin. For their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript, I would like to thank Tina Baier, Fabrizio Bernardi, Diederik Boertien, Andrés Cardona, Dalton Conley, Juho Härkönen, Anne Christine Holtmann, and Florencia Torche.

Citation: Grätz, Michael. 2018. “Competition in the Family: Inequality between Siblings and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Advantage.” Sociological Science 5: 246-269.
Received: December 19, 2017
Accepted: April 2, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
DOI: 10.15195/v5.a11

Opportunity without Equity: Educational Inequality and Constitutional Protections in Egypt

By Parker Webservices on August 24, 2016 in Articles

Michelle Jackson, Elizabeth Buckner

Sociological Science, August 24, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a31

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The claim that the law can be an inequality-reducing weapon is a staple of legal and political discourse. Although it is hard to dispute that legal provisions sometimes work to reduce inequality, we argue that, at least in the domain of equal opportunity in education, the pattern of these effects can be more perverse than has typically been appreciated. Positive laws implemented in the name of promoting equality of opportunity may yield only a narrowly formal equality, with the goal of substantive equality undermined because a high-profile reform will often expose the pathway to educational success. The pathway, once exposed, can then be navigated and successfully subverted by the socioeconomically advantaged. We illustrate such pitfalls of a positive legal approach by examining educational inequality in Egypt, a country with long-standing constitutional protections for equality of opportunity in education. Using data recently collected from a cohort of young people, we show that despite the institutional commitments to equality of opportunity present in Egypt, privileged families have a range of options for subverting the aims of positive legal provisions. We argue that the pattern of educational inequality in Egypt is distinctive relative to countries without similar legal protections.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Michelle Jackson: Department of Sociology, Stanford University
Email: mvjsoc@stanford.edu

Elizabeth Buckner: Teachers College, Columbia University
Email: esb2174@tc.columbia.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank David Cox, Corey Fields, Jared Furuta, David Grusky, Tomás Jiménez, Paolo Parigi, Deborah Rhode, Aliya Saperstein, Steffen Schindler,
Adam Swift, Robb Willer, Cristobal Young, Patricia Young, and participants at the RC28 Spring Meeting 2013 (Trento) and at the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research 2016 (Berlin) for their comments on an earlier version of this article. We would also like to express our appreciation to Stephen Morgan and the Sociological Science reviewers, who offered incisive and helpful comments on the article.