| Lisa Pellerin
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Urban youth and schooling: A dynamic and contextual study of student disengagement
FINAL REPORT:
This dissertation models the process of physical disengagement from schooling among urban youth under differing policy conditions. Data are from the High School Effectiveness Study (HSES), National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), the Common Core of Data (CCD), and the 1990 U.S. Census. The primary research question is: what are the effects of schools' academic and disciplinary climate on student disengagement, and do these effects vary for students of different racial/ethnic groups? Both qualitative (Cusick 1973, 1983) and quantitative researchers (Bryk and Thum, 1989; Wehlage and Rutter, 1987) have described characteristics of schools that contribute significantly to student alienation and disengagement, such as bureaucratization and low academic standards. Conversely, schools in which students remain engaged combine high standards for academics and behavior with responsive adult concern (Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore, 1981; Rutter et al., 1979; Shouse 1996; Wehlage 1983). Similar characteristics of parents and schools, along the dimensions of demandingness and responsiveness, contribute to similar differential outcomes in children. In this study, I apply Baumrind's parenting typology to schools, testing the hypothesis that schools are institutional parents, and that the same characteristics that produce positive outcomes for parents also produce positive outcomes for schools.
In general, my findings support the appropriateness of applying parenting styles to schools. As with studies of outcomes for individual children, my study of aggregate outcomes shows that students do best in authoritative schools, and worst in neglecting schools. Students do continue to benefit from an adult presence in their lives into late adolescence, not only at home, but also in school. For students who persist to 12th grade, there are almost no race/ethnic differences in disengagement when 10th grade disengagement is controlled (Asians are slightly less disengaged than the other three groups). While there are significant school effects on 12th grade disengagement, these effects apply equally to all groups. But this result is due to the very different effects by race on dropping out of school. Essentially, race differences in school effects disappear after 10th grade, but only because more of the disengaged minority students disappear from schools. There are significant differences among the race/ethnic groups in 10th grade disengagement levels. Asians and whites are less disengaged in 10th grade than blacks and Hispanics, and also less likely to drop out between 10th and 12th grades. Among 12th graders, the gaps have partly closed.
Among the more intriguing findings in this study is that Asian students are more likely than whites to drop out of school when academic demands are high and when discipline problems are high. Among the four racial/ethnic groups in my sample, black students seem most affected by the parenting style of their school, with student SES and ability controlled.
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