Family/School Inequality and African-American/Hispanic Achievement

Analyses of educational achievement and racial gaps, in particular, have demonstrated the importance of family background and school attributes. Little of this work, however, incorporates a broad, multi-level, conceptual and analytic focus; one whereby disadvantages at, and potential linkages between, family and school levels are considered simultaneously. In this paper, I offer a framework that views individuals and societal subgroups as simultaneously embedded in multiple institutional spheres that are potentially interdependent. Such embeddedness and interdependency, I argue, are important for understanding the reproduction of group disadvantage, including that pertaining to educational outcomes. Analyses of Black and Hispanic disadvantages in achievement draw from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and its new school and principal component surveys. Baseline family disadvantages (1986) explain a substantial portion of racial variation in math/reading comprehension (1994), while changes in family income and parental education over a five year period (1986–1990) yield notable consequences as well. These effects are strong and direct at the early elementary levels, and partially mediated through earlier patterns of academic achievement for late elementary and middle school students. The addition of school attributes, and modest declines in family effects, suggest that it is partially through (the allocation of children to) schools that general and race-specific family disadvantages are played out. Particularly important are racial inequalities in public/private school enrollment, school social class composition, instructional expenditure, and crime at the school level. I conclude by discussing the implications of my argument and findings for research in the area of education and stratification more broadly.