Day 2: Education Specialization

Choose two of the following six questions. You have two days to complete the exam.

  1. A great deal of research has detailed specific aspects of U.S. schooling that contribute to lower achievement outcomes for African Americans relative to whites. First, discuss the major theoretical explanations that have been offered by scholars to explain the continuing disparities in educational outcomes. Second, which theories go further in explaining these disparities – those concerning family, culture, or the effects of educational institutions (e.g., school characteristics, teacher quality)?
  1. For many decades, sociological research on race/ethnicity and education was highly dichotomized—it concerned White/African American disparities and the educational and social processes underlying them. Yet, the explosion of immigration since the 1960s, coupled with differential fertility rates, has made Latino/as the largest minority group in the U.S. How much do the theoretical insights and conventional research wisdom on race and education developed in the context of the stratification of White and African American youth extend to the case of Latino/as? What are the differences and similarities, and how has our understanding of race/ethnicity and education evolved as a result of this diversity?
  1. The education of immigrants is an important public policy issue faced by schools in the United States today. Arguably, the academic outcomes of Latino and Asian immigrants can be understood by looking at the interaction between schools and families. How have scholars talked about the intersection of families and schools with respect to Latino and Asian immigrants’ academic outcomes (in K-12 schooling)? In answering this question be sure to identify aspects of this intersection that both facilitate positive academic outcomes and impede academic success. In your view, how important are families and schools for explaining patterns of academic outcomes among immigrants? What other factors should be taken into account?
  1. An ongoing debate about race/ethnic disparities in education concerns whether (and how much) they reflect structural differences in opportunity vs. cultural, interpersonal, and even psychological processes. What is the current state of the science regarding this debate?
  1. How do race, gender, and class get reproduced, or subverted in schools?
  1. An increasingly popular argument in educational policy is that actions taken to reduce race/ethnic (and related socioeconomic) disparities in long-term educational attainment will bring greater returns to investment when they target young children. What does research say about this policy agenda—does it support it and, if so, how much and in what ways?