Jencks, Christopher, & Mayer, Susan
Researchers: Christopher JencksSusan Mayer
University Affiliation: Harvard University
Email: christopher_jencks@Harvard.Edu; s-mayer@uchicago.edu
Research Question:
Determine how much effect the social composition of a neighborhood or school has on children's life chances.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: In Inner-City Poverty in the United States in Lynn
Journal Entry: Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. & Michael McGeary editors, Chapter 4
Year: 1990
Findings:
- There is no general pattern of neighborhood or school effects that recurs across all outcomes.
- For Whites, the means SES of their classmates had almost no effect on their chances of planning to attend college, actually attending college, or graduating from college.
- There is some evidence that a high school’s mean SES may have more impact on college attendance among blacks than among Whites, but that evidence is not conclusive.
- A high school’s mean SES does appear to affect entrants’ chances of graduating, even after controlling family background, but not sure if effect persists with entrants’ test scores and plans controlled.
- The effects of a school’s racial composition on students’ educational attainment are even less certain than the effects of its socioeconomic composition.
- Whites who graduated from racially mixed high schools in 1972 were as likely to attend college as those who graduated from all-White schools.
- Northern Blacks who attended all-Black high schools during the early 1960s and early 1970s were more likely than those who attended racially mixed schools to plan on attending college, but they were less likely to enter college and less likely to remain there.
- In the South, attending a racially mixed high school reduced a Black student’s chances of attending college in 1972, when school desegregation was just beginning.
- A high school’s mean SES does not seem to affect the amount White students learn between ninth and twelfth grade, but it may have an effect on how much black students learn.
- The first year of desegregation usually has a small positive effect on Black elementary school students’ reading skills but not on their math skills.
- Regardless of their SES, white Nashville-area teenagers were more likely to have been arrested for serious crimes in the 1950s if they attended schools with low-SES classmates than if they attended schools with high-SES classmates.
- Blacks who attended racially mixed schools are more likely to work in white-collar occupations than Blacks who attended all-Black schools.
- Found no evidence that a school’s racial mix or mean SES affected its students’ economic success independent of their own family background.