Rethinking School-Based Ties: Social Class and the Role of Institutional Agents in Adolescents’ College Plans

Abstract

Background

Planning for college is an increasingly common rite of passage for high school students. Institutional agents—nonkin adults who possess institutional resources—are important sources of support and guidance in this process.

Purpose

This mixed-methods study examines social class differences in the involvement of school-based institutional agents such as teachers and school counselors in helping young people plan for college and the future.

Population

Interviews were conducted with 61 middle-class, working-class, and poor young women to collect information regarding their future plans, social ties, and role of social ties in guiding their plans. In addition, the author uses survey data from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) to examine the association between social class and the role of school-based ties in adolescents’ college planning.

Research Design

Analyses of in-person interview transcripts involved inductive coding and the development of effects matrices to compare coding output by class. Quantitative models were constructed based on qualitative findings. Based on these findings, analyses of ELS data used hierarchical models to estimate the association between social class background and receiving encouragement and information regarding college from social ties.

Findings

Analyses of interview transcripts reveal that disadvantaged young women see school-based ties as their primary means for college planning, whereas middle-class young women often discount advice from these ties when other sources of advice are available. Quantitative models also show that disadvantaged youth rely on school-based ties for information in the college planning process to a greater extent than do middle-class youth. However, disadvantaged youth receive less encouragement to attend college from school and nonschool ties, even after accounting for academic performance.

Conclusions

Inequality in access to college stems in part from differences in the resources available to high school students as they plan for the future. Disadvantaged youth look to schools to help them plan; if schools marshal their resources to assist these young people, they can help address existing inequality in access to college.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allison

P. D.

(2002). Missing data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Barter

, & Renold

(1999, Summer). The use of vignettes in social science research. Social Research Update, 25. Retrieved from http://sru.soc.surrey.ac.uk/SRU25.html

Bettie

(2003). Women without class: Girls, race, and identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bloom

(2007). (Mis)reading social class in the journey towards college: Youth development in urban America. Teachers College Record, 109, 343—368.

Bourdieu

(1986). The forms of capital. In Richardson

(Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241—258). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Briggs

(1998). Brown kids in White suburbs: Housing mobility and the many faces of social capital. Housing Policy Debate, 9, 177—221.

Calarco

J. M.

(2011). “I need help!” Social class and children's help-seeking in elementary school. American Sociological Review, 76, 862—882.

Coleman

J. S.

(1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 95—120.

Covay

, & Carbonaro

(2010). After the bell: Participation in extracurricular activities, classroom behavior, and academic achievement. Sociology of Education, 83, 20—45.

10.

Crosnoe

, Johnson

M. K.

, & Elder

G. H.

Jr. , (2004). Intergenerational bonding in school: The behavioral and contextual correlates of student-teacher relationships. Sociology of Education, 77, 60—81.

11.

Diamond

J. B.

, Randolph

, & Spillane

J. P.

(2004). Teachers' expectations and sense of responsibility for student learning: The importance of race, class, and organizational habitus. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 35, 75—98.

12.

DiPrete

T. A.

, & Buchmann

(2013). The rise of women: The growing gender gap in education and what it means for American schools. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

13.

Hardie

J. H.

(2015). The best laid plans: Social capital in the development of girls' educational and occupational plans. Social Problems, 62, 241—265.

14.

Holland

M. M.

(2015). Trusting each other student-counselor relationships in diverse high schools. Sociology of Education, 88, 244—62.

15.

Holland

N. E.

(2010). Postsecondary education preparation of traditionally underrepresented college students: A social capital perspective. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 3, 111—125.

16.

Kim

D. H.

, & Schneider

(2005). Social capital in action: Alignment of parental support in adolescents' transition to postsecondary education. Social Forces, 84, 1181—1206.

17.

Klevan

, Weinberg

S. L.

, & Middleton

J. A.

(2016). Why the boys are missing: Using social capital to explain gender differences in college enrollment for public high school students. Research in Higher Education, 57, 223—257.

18.

Lareau

(1987). Social class differences in family-school relationships: The importance of cultural capital. Sociology of Education, 60, 73—85.

19.

Lareau

(2000). Home advantage (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

20.

Lareau

(2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life (2nd ed. with an update a decade later). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

21.

Lareau

, & Weininger

E. B.

(2008). Class and the transition to adulthood. In Lareau

, & Conley

(Eds.), Social class: How does it work? (pp. 118—151). New York, NY: Russell Sage.

22.

Lin

(1999). Social networks and status attainment. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 467—487.

23.

Lin

(2000). Inequality in social capital. Contemporary Sociology, 29, 785—795.

24.

Lin

(2001). Social structure: A theory of social structure and action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

25.

Little

R. J. A.

, & Rubin

D. B.

(2002). Statistical analysis with missing data (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley InterScience.

26.

Marsden

P. V.

(1987). Core discussion networks of Americans. American Sociological Review, 52, 122—131.

27.

McDonough

P. M.

(1997). Choosing colleges: How social class and schools structure opportunity. Albany: State University of New York Press.

28.

McDonough

P. M.

(2004). Counseling matters: Knowledge, assistance, and organizational commitment in college preparation. In Tierney

W. G.

, Corwin

Z. B.

, & Colyar

J. E.

(Eds.), Preparing for college: Nine elements of effective outreach (pp. 69—87). Albany: State University of New York Press.

29.

McNeal

R. B.

Jr. (1999). Parental involvement as social capital: Differential effectiveness on science achievement, truancy, and dropping out. Social Forces, 78, 117—144.

30.

Mehan

, Villanueva

, Hubbard

, & Lintz

(1996). Constructing school success: The consequences of untracking low-achieving students. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

31.

Miles

M. B.

, & Huberman

A. M.

(1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

32.

Shamsuddin

(2016). Taken out of context: Piecing together college guidance information in urban high schools. The Urban Review, 48, 101—22.

33.

Small

M. L.

(2011). How to conduct a mixed methods study: Recent trends in a rapidly growing literature. Annual Review of Sociology, 37, 57—86.

34.

Smith

2003. Theorizing religious effects among American adolescents. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42, 17—30.

35.

Sommers

, & Franklin

J. C.

(2012). Overview of projections to 2020. Monthly Labor Review, 135, 3—20.

36.

Stanton-Salazar

R. D.

(1997). A social capital framework for understanding the socialization of racial minority children and youths. Harvard Educational Review, 67, 1—40.

37.

Stanton-Salazar

R. D.

(2011). A social capital framework for the study of institutional agents and their role in the empowerment of low-status students and youth. Youth & Society, 43, 1066—1109.

38.

Stanton-Salazar

R. D.

, & Dornbusch

S. M.

(1995). Social capital and the reproduction of inequality: Information networks among Mexican-origin high school students. Sociology of Education, 68, 116—135.

39.

Stanton-Salazar

R. D.

, & Spina

S. U.

(2000). The network orientations of highly resilient urban minority youth: A network-analytic account of minority socialization and its educational implications. The Urban Review, 32, 227—260.

40.

Stearns

, & Glennie

E. J.

(2010). Opportunities to participate: Extracurricular activities' distribution across and academic correlates in high schools. Social Science Research, 39, 296—309.

41.

Sun

(1999). The contextual effects of community social capital on academic performance. Social Science Research, 28, 403—426.

42.

Thomas

W. E.

, & Hickey

J. V.

(2007). Society in focus: An introduction to sociology. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

43.

Wacquant

L. J. D.

, & Wilson

W. J.

(1989). The cost of racial and class exclusion in the inner city. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 501, 8—25.

44.

Weis

(1990). Working class without work: High school students in a de-industrializing economy. New York, NY: Routledge.

45.

Willis

(1981). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

46.

Wilson

W. J.

(1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

47.

Woods

C. S.

, & Domina

(2014). The school counselor caseload and the high school-to-college pipeline. Teachers College Record, 116, 1—30.