Goldsmith, Pat Rubio
Researchers: Pat Rubio Goldsmith
University Affiliation: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Email: goldsmit@uwm.edu
Research Question:
Investigates whether peer effects are the reason that students from minority-concentrated schools attain less education than students from white-concentrated schools.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: American Educational Research Journal
Journal Entry: Vol. 48, No. 3, Pp. 508-535
Year: 2011
Findings:
- Students from minority-concentrated schools attain less education in the long run that students from White-concentrated schools, controlling for many prior differences among students.
- Frog pond processes offset normative ones, so peer effects cannot explain why minority-concentrated schools yield lower attainment.
- In terms of normative processes, students in minority-concentrated schools tend to have more low-attaining friends and low-achieving schoolmates.
- Schools with many Black and Latino students have frog-pond effects on students course work and especially their class rank; these students take more of the most selective courses in the school than similar students in White-concentrated schools. They also obtain a lower class ranking than similar students in White-concentrated schools, and this improves students long-term educational attainment.
- Theories of minority concentrations in schools must go beyond explanations based on peer effects, because by themselves, they cannot explain why students from minority-concentrated schools attain less education.