Sutton April, Langenkamp Amy G, Muller Chandra, Schiller Kathryn S
University of California, San Diego.
University of Notre Dame, SUNY.
Soc Probl. 2018 May 1;65(2):154-173. doi: 10.1093/socpro/spx044. Epub 2018 Mar 5.
Academic stratification during educational transitions may be maintained, disrupted, or exacerbated. This study marks the first to use national data to investigate how the transition to high school (re)shapes academic status at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender. We seek to identify the role of the high school transition in shaping racial/ethnic and gender stratification by contextualizing students' academic declines during the high school transition within the longer window of their educational careers. Using Add Health, we find that white and black boys experience the greatest drops in their grade point averages (GPAs). We also find that the maintenance of high academic grades between the eighth and ninth grades varies across racial/ethnic and gender subgroups; higher-achieving middle school black boys experience the greatest academic declines. Importantly, we find that white and black boys also faced academic declines before the high school transition, whereas their female student peers experienced academic declines only during the transition to high school. We advance current knowledge on educational stratification by identifying the transition to high school as a juncture in which boys' academic disadvantage widens and high-achieving black boys lose their academic status at the high school starting gate. Our study also underscores the importance of adopting an intersectional framework that considers both race/ethnicity and gender. Given the salience of high school grades for students' long-term success, we discuss the implications of this study for racial/ethnic and gender stratification during and beyond high school.
教育过渡阶段的学业分层可能会得以维持、被打破或加剧。本研究首次使用全国性数据来调查向高中过渡如何在种族/族裔与性别的交叉点上（重新）塑造学业地位。我们试图通过将学生在高中过渡阶段的学业成绩下降置于其更长的教育生涯窗口中来确定高中过渡在塑造种族/族裔和性别分层方面的作用。利用“青少年健康纵向研究”（Add Health）的数据，我们发现白人和黑人男孩的平均绩点（GPA）下降幅度最大。我们还发现，八年级到九年级期间高学业成绩的维持情况在不同种族/族裔和性别亚组中存在差异；成绩较高的初中黑人男孩学业成绩下降幅度最大。重要的是，我们发现白人和黑人男孩在高中过渡之前就面临学业成绩下降，而他们的女性同龄人仅在向高中过渡期间经历学业成绩下降。我们通过将向高中过渡确定为一个节点，即男孩的学业劣势扩大且成绩优异的黑人男孩在高中起点就失去其学业地位，从而推进了当前关于教育分层的知识。我们的研究还强调了采用一个同时考虑种族/族裔和性别的交叉性框架的重要性。鉴于高中成绩对学生长期成功的重要性，我们讨论了本研究对高中期间及高中之后的种族/族裔和性别分层的影响。
