Linda Renzulli
Biographic Data
| ID | 250387 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Linda Renzulli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Linda |
| FAMILY NAME | Renzulli |
| SIGNATURE | RENZULLI L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Purdue University West Lafayette |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3213-3177 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 395 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Remote School Parenting: Assessing Home-School Contexts and Parent Practices Aimed at Engaging Children in Learning
In this study, we examine the practices parents adopted to engage their elementary school-aged children in academically and socioemotionally nurturing activities during the 2020 to 2021 school year, when the pandemic forced schools to pivot to remote-only instruction. Analyzing parenting practices during this profoundly unsettled time, we argue, provides a window into potential mechanisms to narrow persistent class-based inequalities. Both socioe…
Offer It and They Will Come? An Investigation of the Factors Associated With the Uptake of School-Sponsored Resources
In response to economic distress, schools are increasingly serving as providers and distributors of social service resources. However, even when schools offer resources that respond to needs, they struggle to attain high levels of uptake. We examine the family-level correlates of participation in school-sponsored resources during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and find that uptake increases with economic need. In addition, net of need,…
Blending in and standing out: College-going rates across charter and traditional public high schools
Practicing Parental Involvement: Heterogeneity in Parent Involvement Structures in Charter and Traditional Public Schools
Purpose: This study examines differences in the mechanisms that charter schools and traditional public schools use to facilitate parental school involvement and the degree to which these differences account for the high levels of involvement among charter school parents. Data and Research Methods: We merge data from principals and teachers from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey and National Teacher and Principal Survey wit…
Remote or Removed: Predicting Successful Engagement with Online Learning during Covid-19
Using data from a spring 2020 survey of nearly 10,000 parents of elementary school parents in one large southeastern public school district, the authors investigate predictors of elementary school student engagement during the initial period of pandemic remote learning. The authors hypothesize that household material and technological resources, school programming and instructional strategies, and family social capital contribute to student engag…
Racially biased high-school support? The heterogeneous effects of support on bachelor-degree enrollment for first-generation immigrants
First-generation immigrants (FGIs) are eager to achieve the American dream and acquire the advantages a bachelor’s degree affords. FGIs compared to their second-generation, third-generation and native peers fare better educationally. But, this comparison obscures across racial variation within a single-nativity status. As such, it is important to understand what mechanisms might produce inequality in college access among FGIs. One mechanism may b…
The Rise of Homeschooling Regulation in the Era of School Choice: Legislative and Judicial Trends, 1972–2009
Over the past four decades, states have increasingly regulated the practice of homeschooling. It is unclear, however, what initial conditions prompt states to regulate and whether states use the legislative or judicial system to do so. Using event history analyses, we identify how state‐level political dynamics, social movement mobilization, and educational policies have shaped the timing of pertinent regulatory efforts by courts and state legisl…
We’re in This Together”: Bridging and Bonding Social Capital in Elementary School PTOs
Scholarship on the links between families and schools encompasses contradictory notions about social capital and its relation to inequality. One view holds that schools can narrow inequality by generating dense relationships among families, while others suggest that advantaged parents can use these networks to hoard opportunities. This multiple case study analyzes qualitative data from diverse North Carolina elementary schools to learn how parent…
Educational Inequality
Many assume that the US educational system is meritocratic, meaning that through hard work all individuals have an equal chance of acquiring the educational credentials needed to succeed. This entry explores how social inequality in the education system challenges this assumption and often leads to the reproduction, and not reduction, of social inequality. In particular, the entry focuses on how family and school processes generate inequalities i…
Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice
The Closing Door: The Effect of Race on Charter School Closures
Charter schools are promoted by policy makers and advocates as a way to reduce educational inequality. Charter schools tend to enroll higher proportions of black students than do traditional public schools. However, the accountability function of charter schools means that these schools are also more likely to close than traditional public schools. A high incidence of closure can lead to educational instability with students moving in and out of …
Routes and Reasons Out, Paths Back: The Influence of Push and Pull Reasons for Leaving School on Students’ School Reengagement
Dropout is a major issue facing our country's schools; however, many students who drop out of school later go on to finish their degree either by returning to high school or by earning a General Education Development (GED) credential. Despite this, there has been relatively little research on these students who 'stopout' of high school. Drawing on a sample of high school dropouts, we build on research conceptualizing dropouts as having been 'push…
Adapting to Family Setbacks: Malleability of Students' and Parents' Educational Expectations
Ambitions that students and their parents set during their adolescence have significance across the life course. It is yet unclear, however, how these expectations respond to changing family circumstances. In this work, we examine how negative family economic shocks affect educational expectations for students and their parents by using two theoretical perspectives – status attainment and adopt-adapt models. Further, we move beyond these debates …
The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education: Origins, Discontinuations, and Transformations
Innovative Education? A Test of Specialist Mimicry or Generalist Assimilation in Trends in Charter School Specialization Over Time
By most media accounts, charter schools are innovative schools. But little empirical work interrogates this idea. We examine the growth and decline of specialist charter school mission statements as one indicator of innovation. In line with theories of resource partitioning, we find that specialist charter school missions-those asserting innovation with regards to populations served, curricula utilized, and/or educational focus-have become increa…
Educational Transformations and Why Sociology Should Care
Contemporary educational institutions are undergoing simultaneous and contradictory transformations in decentralization and standardization. Such change should force us to step back from the schoolhouse doors, examine the institution of education more broadly, and delineate the ways in which it intersects with other institutional domains. Neo-liberal logics are pushing politicians and educators to embrace “local control” of schooling in the form …
Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances
Teaching and Gender
The study of teachers and teaching has always been an important focus of sociology of education, but the analysis of links between teaching and gender has developed more recently. As Grant and Murray (1999) contend, K‐12 teaching and postsecondary teaching are two different occupations and thus relationships between gender and teaching differ at each level. Other researchers have studied gender as it affects pedagogy and curriculum at all levels …
Pathways to gender inequality in faculty pay: The Impact of institution, academic division, and rank
Everyday Observations: Developing a Sociological Perspective through a Portfolio Term Project
We describe a semester-long active learning project in which students practice the skills of synthesis and analysis by developing portfolios organized around a topic of their own choosing (relevant to their substantive course). We build on prior contributions in four ways. First, we offer a project that is indicative of basic skills in the sociological toolkit and therefore of potential relevance to students’ lives and future careers. Second, we …
Digital Dimension of Cultural Capital: The (In)Visible Advantages for Students Who Exhibit Computer Skills
We update theories of teacher expectancy and cultural capital by linking them to discussions of technology. We argue for broadening the span of culturally important forms of capital by including the digital dimension of cultural capital. Based on data from the third-grade and fifth-grade waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K), results suggest a comprehensive model where teachers play a prominent, mediating r…
The Complexity of Non-Completion: Being Pushed or Pulled to Drop Out of High School
Using a model of student dropout with only two possible outcomes – “still in school” or “dropout” – hides the complex reasons that students leave high school. We offer a model with three outcomes: in school, pushed out or pulled out. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Survey, we find that for black students, differences in SES explain higher likelihoods of being either pushed or pulled out as compared to white students, but Latino stude…
Racial Mismatch and School Type: Teacher Satisfaction and Retention in Charter and Traditional Public Schools
Studies of teacher satisfaction suggest that satisfaction is related to both the racial composition and the organizational structure of the schools in which teachers work. In this article, the authors draw from theories of race and organizations to examine simultaneously the effects of school type (traditional public vs. charter) and racial mismatch on teacher satisfaction and subsequent turnover. In doing so, they examine the organizational diff…
Criminalizing Spousal Rape: The Diffusion of Legal Reforms
While efforts to criminalize spousal rape began in the 1970s, by 2002 only twenty-three states had adopted laws that allow for the full prosecution of sexual assault by a spouse. The authors present the first analysis of martial rape law reform to incorporate insights from research on diffusion. The authors find that states are more likely to criminalize spousal rape when women in the state have more economic power. Conversely, states are less li…
Teaching and Gender
The study of teachers and teaching has always been an important focus of sociology of education, but the analysis of links between teaching and gender has developed more recently. As Grant and Murray (1999) contend, K‐12 teaching and postsecondary teaching are two different occupations and thus relationships between gender and teaching differ at each level. Other researchers have studied gender as it affects pedagogy and curriculum at all levels …
School Choice, Charter Schools, and White Flight
The “choice” movement of the 1990s culminated in a proliferation of charter schools. However, school choice and charter school options may have future consequences for racial segregation given the potential for white flight similar to that which occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing from racial competition theory, this article contributes to literature on education and stratification in a broader sense by examining white enrollment in charter …
Charter School Policy, Implementation, and Diffusion Across the United States
This article applies theoretical and empirical insights on diffusion to a contemporary, important, and striking case in point: the groundswell of state legislation on and implementation of charter schools over the past decade. Drawing from several data sources and using event-history analyses, competing risks, and random-effects negative binomial regression, the analyses examine how interstate dynamics and intrastate attributes affect the adoptio…
Digital Dimension of Cultural Capital: The (In)Visible Advantages for Students Who Exhibit Computer Skills
We update theories of teacher expectancy and cultural capital by linking them to discussions of technology. We argue for broadening the span of culturally important forms of capital by including the digital dimension of cultural capital. Based on data from the third-grade and fifth-grade waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K), results suggest a comprehensive model where teachers play a prominent, mediating r…
Racial Mismatch and School Type: Teacher Satisfaction and Retention in Charter and Traditional Public Schools
Studies of teacher satisfaction suggest that satisfaction is related to both the racial composition and the organizational structure of the schools in which teachers work. In this article, the authors draw from theories of race and organizations to examine simultaneously the effects of school type (traditional public vs. charter) and racial mismatch on teacher satisfaction and subsequent turnover. In doing so, they examine the organizational diff…
Family Matters: Gender, Networks, and Entrepreneurial Outcomes
Journal Article Family Matters: Gender, Networks, and Entrepreneurial Outcomes Get access Linda A. Renzulli, Linda A. Renzulli University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Direct correspondence to Linda A. Renzulli, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Sociology, CB #3210 Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599. Telephone: 919-962-5044. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Goo…
Innovative Education? A Test of Specialist Mimicry or Generalist Assimilation in Trends in Charter School Specialization Over Time
By most media accounts, charter schools are innovative schools. But little empirical work interrogates this idea. We examine the growth and decline of specialist charter school mission statements as one indicator of innovation. In line with theories of resource partitioning, we find that specialist charter school missions-those asserting innovation with regards to populations served, curricula utilized, and/or educational focus-have become increa…
Organizational Environments and the Emergence of Charter Schools in the United States
There is a growing abundance of research on outcomes of charter schools for children, teachers, and communities, yet a paucity of research on why and how charter schools form in the first place. This article presents unique data on charter school applications to show how the early stages of school formation are embedded in, if not driven by, an organizational and institutional context. Three organizational theories-neoinstitutional, population ec…
Remote or Removed: Predicting Successful Engagement with Online Learning during Covid-19
Using data from a spring 2020 survey of nearly 10,000 parents of elementary school parents in one large southeastern public school district, the authors investigate predictors of elementary school student engagement during the initial period of pandemic remote learning. The authors hypothesize that household material and technological resources, school programming and instructional strategies, and family social capital contribute to student engag…
District Segregation, Race Legislation, and Black Enrollment in Charter Schools
Objective. This article examines how segregation at the school level within districts and charter school legislation predict black enrollment levels at local charter schools. Methods. This study uses the Schools and Staffing Survey Charter School Data 1999–2000, Common Core of Data, and a unique data set of district test scores to estimate OLS regression models of black enrollment in charter schools on district racial segregation and race provisi…
Who Can You Turn To? Tie Activation within Core Business Discussion Networks
We examine the connection between personal network characteristics and the activation of ties for access to resources during routine times. We focus on factors affecting business owners' use of their core network ties to obtain legal, loan, financial and expert advice. Owners rely more on core business ties when their core networks contain a high proportion of men, are very dense, and have high occupational heterogeneity. We conclude with suggest…
We’re in This Together”: Bridging and Bonding Social Capital in Elementary School PTOs
Scholarship on the links between families and schools encompasses contradictory notions about social capital and its relation to inequality. One view holds that schools can narrow inequality by generating dense relationships among families, while others suggest that advantaged parents can use these networks to hoard opportunities. This multiple case study analyzes qualitative data from diverse North Carolina elementary schools to learn how parent…
Adapting to Family Setbacks: Malleability of Students' and Parents' Educational Expectations
Ambitions that students and their parents set during their adolescence have significance across the life course. It is yet unclear, however, how these expectations respond to changing family circumstances. In this work, we examine how negative family economic shocks affect educational expectations for students and their parents by using two theoretical perspectives – status attainment and adopt-adapt models. Further, we move beyond these debates …
Pathways to gender inequality in faculty pay: The Impact of institution, academic division, and rank
Routes and Reasons Out, Paths Back: The Influence of Push and Pull Reasons for Leaving School on Students’ School Reengagement
Dropout is a major issue facing our country's schools; however, many students who drop out of school later go on to finish their degree either by returning to high school or by earning a General Education Development (GED) credential. Despite this, there has been relatively little research on these students who 'stopout' of high school. Drawing on a sample of high school dropouts, we build on research conceptualizing dropouts as having been 'push…
Race, Gender, and the Wage Gap: Comparing Faculty Salaries in Predominately White and Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Using the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the authors compare the gender pay gap at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) with the gap at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Also, within the HBCU milieu, they examine how class of the institution has an impact on pay gaps. First, they find that HBCUs do seem to have a smaller gap but that pay for all faculty at HBCUs is lower than in PWIs. Second, the gap is onl…
Mixing or Matching? The Influence of Voluntary Associations on the Occupational Diversity and Density of Small Business Owners' Networks
Most employeeswork in large organizations, enjoying the potential benefits of forming career-enhancing intraorganizational networks. By contrast, small business owners must look to external contexts such as voluntary associations for their business-enhancing ties. This research discusses ways through which involvement in voluntary associations can enhance or diminish occupational diversity and density for owners' networks. Whether owners met thei…
The Closing Door: The Effect of Race on Charter School Closures
Charter schools are promoted by policy makers and advocates as a way to reduce educational inequality. Charter schools tend to enroll higher proportions of black students than do traditional public schools. However, the accountability function of charter schools means that these schools are also more likely to close than traditional public schools. A high incidence of closure can lead to educational instability with students moving in and out of …
Everyday Observations: Developing a Sociological Perspective through a Portfolio Term Project
We describe a semester-long active learning project in which students practice the skills of synthesis and analysis by developing portfolios organized around a topic of their own choosing (relevant to their substantive course). We build on prior contributions in four ways. First, we offer a project that is indicative of basic skills in the sociological toolkit and therefore of potential relevance to students’ lives and future careers. Second, we …
Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances
It's up in the Air, or Is It
In his observations about the sociological imagination, C. Wright Mills argues that people have difficulty seeing connections between individual outcomes and social structures. Inspired by Mills's observations, we developed a classroom exercise for stratification and organization courses that demonstrates how social structures can constrain individual actions and still produce outcomes that students often attribute to individual effort. Using the…
Connecting the Classroom to County Characteristics
Souvent les etudiants et les professeur peuvent ne pas se comprendre. En effet, il est frequent de parler d'incompatibilite entre cours theorique et realite pratique, d'ou l'utilite du travail de groupe. Mais celui-ci ne peu apporter de sens critique aux etudiants, selon l'A., que si le professeur considere trois elements a la base de toute reflexion : 1) les processus d'apprentissage, 2) le contenu, 3) la structure des instructions
Criminalizing Spousal Rape: The Diffusion of Legal Reforms
While efforts to criminalize spousal rape began in the 1970s, by 2002 only twenty-three states had adopted laws that allow for the full prosecution of sexual assault by a spouse. The authors present the first analysis of martial rape law reform to incorporate insights from research on diffusion. The authors find that states are more likely to criminalize spousal rape when women in the state have more economic power. Conversely, states are less li…
Educational Transformations and Why Sociology Should Care
Contemporary educational institutions are undergoing simultaneous and contradictory transformations in decentralization and standardization. Such change should force us to step back from the schoolhouse doors, examine the institution of education more broadly, and delineate the ways in which it intersects with other institutional domains. Neo-liberal logics are pushing politicians and educators to embrace “local control” of schooling in the form …
Racially biased high-school support? The heterogeneous effects of support on bachelor-degree enrollment for first-generation immigrants
First-generation immigrants (FGIs) are eager to achieve the American dream and acquire the advantages a bachelor’s degree affords. FGIs compared to their second-generation, third-generation and native peers fare better educationally. But, this comparison obscures across racial variation within a single-nativity status. As such, it is important to understand what mechanisms might produce inequality in college access among FGIs. One mechanism may b…
Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice
Connecting the Classroom to County Characteristics
Souvent les etudiants et les professeur peuvent ne pas se comprendre. En effet, il est frequent de parler d'incompatibilite entre cours theorique et realite pratique, d'ou l'utilite du travail de groupe. Mais celui-ci ne peu apporter de sens critique aux etudiants, selon l'A., que si le professeur considere trois elements a la base de toute reflexion : 1) les processus d'apprentissage, 2) le contenu, 3) la structure des instructions
Family Matters: Gender, Networks, and Entrepreneurial Outcomes
Journal Article Family Matters: Gender, Networks, and Entrepreneurial Outcomes Get access Linda A. Renzulli, Linda A. Renzulli University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Direct correspondence to Linda A. Renzulli, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Sociology, CB #3210 Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599. Telephone: 919-962-5044. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Goo…
It's up in the Air, or Is It
In his observations about the sociological imagination, C. Wright Mills argues that people have difficulty seeing connections between individual outcomes and social structures. Inspired by Mills's observations, we developed a classroom exercise for stratification and organization courses that demonstrates how social structures can constrain individual actions and still produce outcomes that students often attribute to individual effort. Using the…
Who Can You Turn To? Tie Activation within Core Business Discussion Networks
We examine the connection between personal network characteristics and the activation of ties for access to resources during routine times. We focus on factors affecting business owners' use of their core network ties to obtain legal, loan, financial and expert advice. Owners rely more on core business ties when their core networks contain a high proportion of men, are very dense, and have high occupational heterogeneity. We conclude with suggest…
School Choice, Charter Schools, and White Flight
The “choice” movement of the 1990s culminated in a proliferation of charter schools. However, school choice and charter school options may have future consequences for racial segregation given the potential for white flight similar to that which occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing from racial competition theory, this article contributes to literature on education and stratification in a broader sense by examining white enrollment in charter …
Charter School Policy, Implementation, and Diffusion Across the United States
This article applies theoretical and empirical insights on diffusion to a contemporary, important, and striking case in point: the groundswell of state legislation on and implementation of charter schools over the past decade. Drawing from several data sources and using event-history analyses, competing risks, and random-effects negative binomial regression, the analyses examine how interstate dynamics and intrastate attributes affect the adoptio…
Organizational Environments and the Emergence of Charter Schools in the United States
There is a growing abundance of research on outcomes of charter schools for children, teachers, and communities, yet a paucity of research on why and how charter schools form in the first place. This article presents unique data on charter school applications to show how the early stages of school formation are embedded in, if not driven by, an organizational and institutional context. Three organizational theories-neoinstitutional, population ec…
District Segregation, Race Legislation, and Black Enrollment in Charter Schools
Objective. This article examines how segregation at the school level within districts and charter school legislation predict black enrollment levels at local charter schools. Methods. This study uses the Schools and Staffing Survey Charter School Data 1999–2000, Common Core of Data, and a unique data set of district test scores to estimate OLS regression models of black enrollment in charter schools on district racial segregation and race provisi…
Race, Gender, and the Wage Gap: Comparing Faculty Salaries in Predominately White and Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Using the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the authors compare the gender pay gap at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) with the gap at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Also, within the HBCU milieu, they examine how class of the institution has an impact on pay gaps. First, they find that HBCUs do seem to have a smaller gap but that pay for all faculty at HBCUs is lower than in PWIs. Second, the gap is onl…
Mixing or Matching? The Influence of Voluntary Associations on the Occupational Diversity and Density of Small Business Owners' Networks
Most employeeswork in large organizations, enjoying the potential benefits of forming career-enhancing intraorganizational networks. By contrast, small business owners must look to external contexts such as voluntary associations for their business-enhancing ties. This research discusses ways through which involvement in voluntary associations can enhance or diminish occupational diversity and density for owners' networks. Whether owners met thei…
Teaching and Gender
The study of teachers and teaching has always been an important focus of sociology of education, but the analysis of links between teaching and gender has developed more recently. As Grant and Murray (1999) contend, K‐12 teaching and postsecondary teaching are two different occupations and thus relationships between gender and teaching differ at each level. Other researchers have studied gender as it affects pedagogy and curriculum at all levels …
Criminalizing Spousal Rape: The Diffusion of Legal Reforms
While efforts to criminalize spousal rape began in the 1970s, by 2002 only twenty-three states had adopted laws that allow for the full prosecution of sexual assault by a spouse. The authors present the first analysis of martial rape law reform to incorporate insights from research on diffusion. The authors find that states are more likely to criminalize spousal rape when women in the state have more economic power. Conversely, states are less li…
The Complexity of Non-Completion: Being Pushed or Pulled to Drop Out of High School
Using a model of student dropout with only two possible outcomes – “still in school” or “dropout” – hides the complex reasons that students leave high school. We offer a model with three outcomes: in school, pushed out or pulled out. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Survey, we find that for black students, differences in SES explain higher likelihoods of being either pushed or pulled out as compared to white students, but Latino stude…
Racial Mismatch and School Type: Teacher Satisfaction and Retention in Charter and Traditional Public Schools
Studies of teacher satisfaction suggest that satisfaction is related to both the racial composition and the organizational structure of the schools in which teachers work. In this article, the authors draw from theories of race and organizations to examine simultaneously the effects of school type (traditional public vs. charter) and racial mismatch on teacher satisfaction and subsequent turnover. In doing so, they examine the organizational diff…
Teaching and Gender
The study of teachers and teaching has always been an important focus of sociology of education, but the analysis of links between teaching and gender has developed more recently. As Grant and Murray (1999) contend, K‐12 teaching and postsecondary teaching are two different occupations and thus relationships between gender and teaching differ at each level. Other researchers have studied gender as it affects pedagogy and curriculum at all levels …
Pathways to gender inequality in faculty pay: The Impact of institution, academic division, and rank
Everyday Observations: Developing a Sociological Perspective through a Portfolio Term Project
We describe a semester-long active learning project in which students practice the skills of synthesis and analysis by developing portfolios organized around a topic of their own choosing (relevant to their substantive course). We build on prior contributions in four ways. First, we offer a project that is indicative of basic skills in the sociological toolkit and therefore of potential relevance to students’ lives and future careers. Second, we …
Digital Dimension of Cultural Capital: The (In)Visible Advantages for Students Who Exhibit Computer Skills
We update theories of teacher expectancy and cultural capital by linking them to discussions of technology. We argue for broadening the span of culturally important forms of capital by including the digital dimension of cultural capital. Based on data from the third-grade and fifth-grade waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K), results suggest a comprehensive model where teachers play a prominent, mediating r…
Educational Transformations and Why Sociology Should Care
Contemporary educational institutions are undergoing simultaneous and contradictory transformations in decentralization and standardization. Such change should force us to step back from the schoolhouse doors, examine the institution of education more broadly, and delineate the ways in which it intersects with other institutional domains. Neo-liberal logics are pushing politicians and educators to embrace “local control” of schooling in the form …
Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances
Innovative Education? A Test of Specialist Mimicry or Generalist Assimilation in Trends in Charter School Specialization Over Time
By most media accounts, charter schools are innovative schools. But little empirical work interrogates this idea. We examine the growth and decline of specialist charter school mission statements as one indicator of innovation. In line with theories of resource partitioning, we find that specialist charter school missions-those asserting innovation with regards to populations served, curricula utilized, and/or educational focus-have become increa…
The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education: Origins, Discontinuations, and Transformations
Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice
The Closing Door: The Effect of Race on Charter School Closures
Charter schools are promoted by policy makers and advocates as a way to reduce educational inequality. Charter schools tend to enroll higher proportions of black students than do traditional public schools. However, the accountability function of charter schools means that these schools are also more likely to close than traditional public schools. A high incidence of closure can lead to educational instability with students moving in and out of …
Routes and Reasons Out, Paths Back: The Influence of Push and Pull Reasons for Leaving School on Students’ School Reengagement
Dropout is a major issue facing our country's schools; however, many students who drop out of school later go on to finish their degree either by returning to high school or by earning a General Education Development (GED) credential. Despite this, there has been relatively little research on these students who 'stopout' of high school. Drawing on a sample of high school dropouts, we build on research conceptualizing dropouts as having been 'push…
Sociology (32 works) · Political science (25 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Law (15 works) · School Choice and Performance (12 works) · Charter (10 works) · Mathematics education (10 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Public Administration (9 works)