One potentially underestimated aspect of resource inequity in U.S. public schools is access to social capital in external organizational environments. This research examines partnerships among 211 New York City high schools and 918 partner organizations from 2001 to 2005 as sources of external school social capital providing resources that can…

In recent years, it has been well established that study abroad participation is a socially selective process. Today, scholars generally focus on single social markers, often using cross-sectional data. In this article, we instead adopt an intersectional and longitudinal approach to improve our understanding of the development of social…

This article investigates the understudied relationship between teacher socioeconomic status (SES) and retention. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction and longitudinal data from 378 mathematics teachers, we use logistic regression to examine whether teacher SES, conceptualized and measured in terms of their economic, social, and…

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…

Social capital is broadly beneficial, but parents reap particular benefits from network ties. Schools are key organizations through which parents develop ties. In this article, we examine school-based networks that provide valuable resources. What factors are associated with greater access to key resources such as child care, parenting advice, and…

In recent years, research has brought attention to the heterogeneity of resources that first-generation students bring with them to higher education and the factors that assist in these students' social and academic adjustment to university life. However, few studies have focused on how these students' early socialization and experiences over the…

In this article, we study the relationship between intergenerational networks in classrooms (i.e., relationships among parents in classrooms, and between parents and their children's classmates) and students' grades. Using panel data on complete classroom networks of approximately 3,000 adolescents and their parents in approximately 200 classes in…

Drawing on interviews with 38 black and Latino/a engineering students at a predominantly white, elite university, I use a cultural analytic framework to explicate the role of pre-college integration in the heterogeneous psychosocial and academic experiences of students of color on predominantly white campuses. I identify three cultural strategies…

How can an organization help participants increase their social capital? Using data from an ethnographic study of Launch, an organization that prepares low-income students of color to attend elite boarding schools, I analyze how the organization's structures not only generate social ties among students but also stratify those ties horizontally and…

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…

Empirical research on cultural and social capital has generally ignored the key role of institutions in setting standards that determine the contingent value of this capital. Furthermore, many studies presume that the yielding of profit from cultural, social, and economic capital is automatic. Bourdieu's concept of field highlights the ''rules of…

Sociologists have long recognized that cultural differences help explain the perpetuation of inequality by invisibly limiting access to elite cultural norms. However, there has been little investigation of the ways students reconcile shifts in habitus gained in educational settings with existing, nonelite habitus. The authors use both qualitative…

Many minority, first-generation, and low-income students aspire to college; however, the college application process can present a significant obstacle. These students cannot always rely on their parents for college information and must instead turn to their high schools, where counselors are in a key position. Drawing on a two-year field study at…

Religion is the most segregated arena of American life, but its effect on collegiate diversity outcomes has been overlooked, despite the significance of both race and religion in many students' lives. This study examines whether religious observance, religious worldview identification, and participation in a religious student organization are…

We investigate class differences in youth activity participation with interview, survey, and archival data from a diverse sample of parents (n = 51) in two schools. Findings point toward structural rather than cultural explanations. Working- and middle-class parents overlap in parenting logics about participation, though differ in one respect:…