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We ask whether patterns of racial ethnic and socioeconomic stratification in educational attainment are amplified or attenuated when we take a longer view of educational careers. We propose a model of staged advantage to understand how educational inequalities evolve over the life course. Distinct from cumulative advantage, staged advantage asserts that inequalities in education ebb and flow over the life course as the population at risk of making each educational transition changes along with the constraints they confront in seeking more education. Results based on data from the 2014 follow up of the sophomore cohort of High School and Beyond offer partial support for our hypotheses. The educational attainment process was far from over for our respondents as they aged through their 30s and 40s: More than 6 of 10 continued their formal training during this period, and 4 of 10 earned an additional credential. Patterns of educational stratification at midlife became more pronounced in some ways as women pulled further ahead of men in their educational attainments and parental education (but not income), and high school academic achievement continued to shape educational trajectories at the bachelor's degree level and beyond. However, African Americans gained on whites during this life phase through continued formal (largely academic) training and slightly greater conditional probabilities of graduate or professional degree attainment; social background fails to predict earning an associate's degree. These results, showing educational changes and transitions far into adulthood, have implications for our understanding of the complex role of education in stratification processes.

Purpose: This study examines how resources and organizational decisions within seven geographically diverse elementary schools shape instructional coordination for Tier 2 interventions within the Response to Intervention (RtI) framework. Research Methods: This work is part of a larger, multiple-case study examining how schools support academic achievement for economically disadvantaged students. We draw on qualitative interview and observation data from seven purposively sampled public elementary schools in Wisconsin during the 2017-18 school year. In our analysis, we approach each school as an individual case to ascertain how resources and organizational decisions shaped instructional coordination for Tier 2 interventions within the RtI framework. Findings: We find that organizational contexts shape how schools approach the instructional coordination of staffing and schedules requisite for multitiered instruction. Specifically, local programming, delineation of staff roles, and availability and deployment of school resources influenced if and how schools coordinated staff and schedules to support RtI. These elements consequently informed student groupings for interventions, the extent of student access to Tier 1 and Tier 2 content, and staff engagement in data-driven discussions. Implications: By closely examining the everyday realities of diverse elementary schools, this study demonstrates that RtI is not a singular program but a context-contingent process. In tracing the relationships between school contexts, instructional coordination, and the practical implementation of RtI, we provide insight into the messy realities of schools and obstacles to RtI that past research overlooks. These findings emphasize the importance of systematic, school-wide coordination that extends beyond single grade levels and subjects.

State and national school accountability policies situate preventing chronic absenteeism on par with meeting state standardized test benchmarks. We question relying on school attendance as both a component of accountability policies and a means of enhancing equity in schools. Our research suggests out-of-school factors unrelated to missed instruction account for most of the associations between absences and test score achievement--with unexcused absences driving those associations. Excessive absences--and particularly unexcused absences--do not harm students mainly through missed instruction. Instead, they reflect out-of-school harms students endure that have produced inequalities for years--and will continue to do so even if students show up or parents call in.

Professional collaboration is widely seen as an important component in educator professional development, but we know little about the interactional processes that undergird teacher learning in collaborative workgroups. This paper focuses on four collaborative workgroups in a yearlong, mathematics-focused professional development series for pre-Kindergarten teachers. Using a communities of practice framework, we analyzed teacher workgroup conversations to understand how these interactions mediated teachers' learning. We identified three modes of participation that characterized workgroup conversations and influenced the availability and quality of learning opportunities afforded to participants: interpersonal management, validation, and collective reasoning. Findings provide insight into how interactional processes in teacher workgroups may advance or inhibit teachers' learning.

Recent efforts to understand aggregate student loan debt have shifted the focus away from undergraduate borrowing and toward dramatically rising debt among graduate and professional students. We suggest educational debt plays a key role in social stratification by either deterring bachelor's degree holders from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds from pursuing lucrative careers through advanced degree programs or imposing a high cost for entry. We speculate that the ongoing personal financing of advanced degrees, changes to funding in higher education, and increasing returns to and demand for postbaccalaureate degrees have created a perfect storm for those seeking degrees beyond college. We find that aggregate increases in borrowing among advanced degree students between 1996 and 2016 can be explained in part by increasing enrollment rates, particularly among master's degree students, and large, secular increases in graduate and professional students' undergraduate and graduate borrowing. In contrast to undergraduate debt alone, the burden of educational debt among graduate borrowers appears to have fallen on students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and historically underserved students of color more so than their more advantaged counterparts and on women more so than men. However, we also find that median advanced degree wage premia over those of bachelor's degree holders are substantial for many who graduate with advanced degrees but are particularly high for African American and low socioeconomic status graduates, complicating simple conclusions about the stratification of debt at the postgraduate level.

Determining the effectiveness of core mathematics curricula is foundational to evidence-based practice. Examining effectiveness heterogeneity is also crucial to better understanding mathematics achievement among English language learners (ELLs). In this study, we used a quasi-experimental design (difference-in-differences) to examine the impact of a standards-based elementary mathematics curriculum ("Bridges in Mathematics") on fifth graders' annual gains in mathematics achievement in a large midwestern school district compared to the district's prior curriculum ("Investigations"). We also investigated whether the effect of "Bridges" varied across English language proficiency (ELP) levels of ELLs. Students in schools that implemented "Bridges" (n = 1,839) showed significantly greater mathematics gains compared to those receiving the prior curriculum (n = 3,354; g = 0.25 in change score standard deviations). This effect did not vary significantly across ELP levels. Limitations of this study as well as implications for research and practice with core curricula are discussed. [For the corresponding grantee submission, see ED616693.]

Parental income and wealth contribute to children's success but are at least partly endogenous to parents' cognitive and noncognitive skills. We estimate the degree to which mothers' skills measured in early adulthood confound the relationship between their economic resources and their children's postsecondary education outcomes. Analyses of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 suggest that maternal cognitive and noncognitive skills attenuate half of parental income's association with child baccalaureate college attendance, a fifth of its association with elite college attendance, and a quarter of its association with bachelor's degree completion. Maternal skills likewise attenuate a third of parental wealth's association with children's baccalaureate college attendance, half of its association with elite college attendance, and a fifth of its association with bachelor's degree completion. Observational studies of the relationship between parents' economic resources and children's postsecondary attainments that fail to account for parental skills risk seriously overstating the benefits of parental income and wealth.

Although some scholars report that all students are better served by attending more prestigious postsecondary institutions, others have argued that students are better off attending colleges where they are about average in terms of academic ability and suffer worse outcomes if they attend schools that are "out of their league" at which they are "overmatched." The latter argument is most frequently deployed as a paternalistic justification for ending affirmative action. We take advantage of a natural admissions experiment at the University of California to test the effect of being overmatched for students on the margin of admission to elite universities. Consistent with the mismatch hypothesis, we find that students accumulate more credits when they attend less demanding institutions. However, students do not earn higher grades and are no more or less likely to drop out of schools where they are overmatched and are less likely to drop out than they would have been had they attended less demanding institutions.

Grades are the fundamental currency of our educational system; they signal academic achievement and noncognitive skills to parents, employers, postsecondary gatekeepers, and students themselves. Grade inflation compromises the signaling value of grades and undermines their capacity to achieve the functions for which they are intended. We challenge the "increases in grade point average" definition of grade inflation and argue that grade inflation must be understood in terms of the signaling power of grades. Analyzing data from four nationally representative samples, we find that in the decades following 1972: (a) grades have risen at high schools and dropped at 4-year colleges, in general, and selective 4-year institutions, in particular; and (b) the signaling power of grades has attenuated little, if at all. (Contains 2 tables and 5 notes.)

This article investigates the empirical basis for often-repeated arguments that gender differences in entrance into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors are largely explained by disparities in prior achievement. Analyses use data from three national cohorts of college matriculates across three decades to consider differences across several indicators of high school math and science achievement at the mean and also at the top of the test distribution. Analyses also examine the different comparative advantages men and women enjoy in math/science versus English/reading. Regardless of how prior achievement is measured, very little of the strong and persistent gender gap in physical science and engineering majors over time is explained. Findings highlight the limitations of theories focusing on gender differences in skills and suggest directions for future research. (Contains 2 figures, 2 tables and 13 notes.)

This exchange represents a follow-up to an article on the effects of state high school exit examinations that previously appeared in this journal (Warren, Grodsky, & Kalogrides 2009). That 2009 article was featured prominently in a report by the National Research Council (NRC) that evaluated the efficacy of test-based accountability systems. Hanushek (2012) was highly critical of the NRC's interpretation of the existing evidence, including Warren, Grodsky, & Kalogrides' 2009 piece. Here, Warren and Grodsky explain why they believe that Hanushek incorrectly evaluated their original article on state high school exit examinations. Hanushek then responds. (Contains 11 notes.)

Buchmann, Condron and Roscigno argue in their article, "Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment," that the activities in which students engage to prepare for college entrance exams are forms of shadow education, a means by which more advantaged parents seek to pass their privileged status along to their children. By providing their children with shadow education, advantaged parents help them achieve higher scores than they otherwise would have achieved and further increase the differences between the exam scores of more advantaged and less advantaged children. In this commentary, the author focuses on the main contribution of BCR's article: the application of the concept of shadow education to SAT and ACT test preparation. He argues that BCR's conception of shadow education is flawed in two important ways. First, some of the activities they consider as "shadow education" are not shadowy at all; they are widely available free of charge to most students. The only true forms of shadow education here are private test preparation courses and private tutors. Second, the way they operationalize the concept of shadow education makes it impossible to discern the extent to which these true forms of shadow education contribute to student test scores or postsecondary destinations. The author offers an alternative interpretation of BCR's results. He suggests that shadow education in preparation for college entrance exams is a relatively ineffective means of improving test scores but nonetheless quite important in terms of its psychic benefits. (Contains 5 notes.)

Despite increases in the representation of African American and Hispanic youth in advanced math courses in high school over the past two decades, recent national reports indicate that substantial inequality in achievement remains. These inequalities can temper one's optimism about the degree to which the United States has made real progress toward educational equity. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS), the authors find that the math achievement gap is most pronounced among those students who take the most demanding high school math classes, such as precalculus and calculus. The authors explore the roles of family socioeconomic status and school composition in explaining this pattern. Findings suggest that among those students reaching the advanced math high school stratum, Hispanic youth from low-income families and African American youth from segregated schools fare the worst in terms of closing the achievement gap with their white peers. The authors discuss potential explanations for the achievement differences observed and stress the need for more research that focuses explicitly on the factors that inhibit minority/majority parity at the top of the secondary curricular structure. (Contains 2 figures, 3 tables, and 14 notes.)

In this paper we investigate how participation in the Early Assessment Program, which provides California high school juniors with information about their academic readiness for college-level work at California State University campuses, affects their college-going behavior and need for remediation in college. Using administrative records from California State University,-Sacramento and the California Department of Education, we find that participation in the Early Assessment Program reduces the average student's probability of needing remediation at California State University by 6.1 percentage points in English and 4.1 percentage points in mathematics. Rather than discouraging poorly prepared students from applying to Sacramento State, EAP appears to lead students to increase their academic preparation while still in high school. (Contains 9 tables, 5 figures and 25 footnotes.)

In 23 states, members of the high school class of 2008 were required to pass a state high school exit examination (HSEE) to earn regular high school diplomas. Proponents of these policies claim that they improve student academic achievement, although critics argue that they reduce the quality of instruction without raising academic achievement. Using nationally representative data collected to facilitate the analysis of temporal achievement trends, the effects of minimum competency and more difficult state HSEEs on student achievement in mathematics and reading between 1971 and 2004 are evaluated. The potential disparate impacts of state HSEEs on the achievement of students by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and prior academic achievement are examined in this study. No evidence is found for any effects of state HSEEs on achievement in either reading or mathematics at the mean or at the 10th, 20th, 80th, or 90th percentiles of the achievement distribution. (Contains 10 notes and 4 tables.)

This article explores how the structure of higher education in the United States and Israel mediates the relationship among race/ethnicity, social origins, and postsecondary outcomes. On the basis of differences in how the two systems of higher education have developed, the authors anticipated that inequality in college attendance will be greater in Israel, while inequality in the type of college or university one attends will be greater in the United States. They found that students in the United States are more likely to attend college than are their Israeli counterparts. Contrary to their expectations, however, inequality in the chances of attendance is similar across these nations, if not slightly greater in the United States. Inequality in the types of institutions that students attend appears greater in the United States, but the contours of ethnic inequality in college destinations are markedly different across these two contexts. (Contains 7 tables, 4 figures, and 19 footnotes.)

Since the late 1970s, an increasing number of states have required students to pass statewide high school exit examinations (HSEEs) in order to graduate. States have usually adopted HSEEs in response to the perception that a substantial number of graduates lack skills that are required for success in the modern economy. What do these educational reforms mean for students' postsecondary economic and labor market prospects? The central hypothesis of the study presented here was that state HSEE policies have the effect of widening gaps in labor force status and earnings between young people who have high school diplomas and those who do not. To test this hypothesis, the authors modeled the association between state HSEE policies and these labor market outcomes using data from the 1980-2000 U.S. censuses and the 1984-2002 Outgoing Rotation Groups of the Current Population Survey. The results revealed no evidence that state HSEEs positively affect labor force status or earnings or that the connections between state HSEE policies and these outcomes vary by students' race/ethnicity or the level of difficulty of state HSEEs. (Contains 6 tables and 18 notes.)