We analyze longitudinal data from students who spent their academic careers in North Carolina (NC) public secondary schools and attended NC public universities to investigate the importance of high school racial composition and opportunities to learn in secondary school for choosing a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) major.…

In this study we investigate Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) high school graduates' academic performance in the first year of college and test whether their exposure to racial segregation in high school at both the school and classroom levels affected their college freshman grade point averages. Utilizing administrative data from the Roots of…

We argue that Latino/a students are more likely to major in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in college if they were educated in high schools where they studied with satisfied teachers who worked in collaborative professional communities. Quantitative results demonstrate that collaborative professional communities in high school…

Analyzing Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey--Kindergarten (ECLS-K) data, we examine how exposure to instructional practices influences math test scores at the end of kindergarten for children from different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and for children with different levels of math skills at kindergarten entry. We also analyze…

Most studies of educational organizations have focused on structural features of schools, such as size, resources, and infrastructure. Research on schools' organizational culture is more sparse. Yet, these studies have suggested that the organizational culture of schools can have important implications for teaching practices and student outcomes.…

Race shapes many aspects of students' high school experiences that are relevant to the college admissions process. We examine the racially-specific effects of high school course of study on college selectivity. Using NELS 1988-1994, we test how race and track interactively predict the prestige of the first post-secondary institution attended. We…

This study investigated the effects of the peer social context and child characteristics on the growth of authority-acceptance behavior problems across first, second, and third grades, using data from the normative sample of the Fast Track Project. Three hundred sixty-eight European American and African American boys and girls (51% male; 46%…

Because of segregation in neighborhoods and schools, college may provide the first opportunity for many young adults to interact closely with members of different racial and ethnic groups. Little research has examined how interracial friendships form during this period. This article investigates changes in the racial composition of friendship…

Background/Context: Perpetuation theory predicts that attending a racially segregated school paves the way for a lifetime of segregated experiences in neighborhoods, schools, and jobs. Research conducted in the 1970s and 1980s linked racial isolation in high schools with later racial isolation in many social settings among African-American…

A gap in standardized achievement-test scores among different groups of students has existed since the inception of standardized testing. The gap between white and African-American schoolchildren was the primary impetus behind much of the social policy devoted to desegregating schools in the second half of the past century. Through a combination…

A recent study of ninth- and tenth-grade dropouts in North Carolina shows that Hispanic adolescents have the highest early dropout rate among the state's largest ethnic groups. This relationship persists when boys and girls are analyzed separately: Hispanic boys are more likely to drop out early than other boys are, and Hispanic girls are more…