Previous studies have shown that educational expectations of individuals with high socioeconomic status (SES) are relatively unaffected by low academic performance, a phenomenon called "sticky expectations." However, this result might be biased by endogeneity and reverse causality between academic achievement and educational…

Social capital is widely cited as benefiting children's school performance, but close inspection of existing research yields inconsistent findings. Focusing on intergenerational closure among parents of children in the same school, this article draws from a field experiment to test the effects of social capital on children's achievement in reading…

This article draws from American research on ''concerted cultivation'' to compare the parenting logics of 41 upper-middle-class parents in Toronto, Canada. We consider not only how parents structure their children's after-school time (what parents do) but also how the broader ecology of schooling informs their parenting logics (how they…

Why is it that children of immigrants often outdo their ethnic majority peers in educational aspirations yet struggle to keep pace with their achievements? This article advances the explanation that many immigrant communities, while positively selected on education, still have moderate absolute levels of schooling. Therefore, parents' education…

We analyze the subtle mechanisms at work in the interaction between families and schools that underlie social inequalities at the transition point from elementary school into secondary-school tracks in Berlin, Germany. We do so by combining quantitative data from a large-scale survey and assessment study (N = 3,935 students and their parents) with…

Explores three factors that may explain why certain Asian-American groups have higher educational expectations than White groups: (1) favorable socioeconomic characteristics, (2) demonstrated academic ability, and (3) high parental expectations. Indicates that parental expectations explain a large portion of children's high expectations for all…

Hypothesizes that consistent parent encouragement through secondary school years is an important cause of students aspiring towards higher education and entering four-year colleges. Findings supported the hypothesis. (AM)