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Students’ Educational Pathways: Aspirations, Decisions, and Constrained Choices Along the Education Lifecourse

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Handbook of the Sociology of Education in the 21st Century

Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research ((HSSR))

Abstract

Educational pathways are marked by a series of choices that individuals and their families make that shape students’ development and educational destinations. The education attainment model is defined by a notable tension between individual choice and structural constraints that exist throughout the life course. This chapter synthesizes research on the constrained choices that typify educational pathways from early childhood to adulthood in the U.S. We focus on several areas in the literature in which the tension between individual choice and structural constraints plays out, specifically: educational aspirations, curricular differentiation, and informational barriers and opportunities. Within each of these interconnected areas we describe the dominant theories that buttress the individual determinants model, and the structural or institutional forces that shape the educational attainment process. We also review policy trends that have emerged over the past several decades designed to attenuate structural inequalities in students’ educational pathways.

We thank Thad Domina and Sherrie Reed for feedback on an earlier draft of this paper, and Elizabeth Zeiger Friedmann and Jake Jackson for research assistance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There has been much discussion in the measurement of high school completion/dropout status (see http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016007.pdf).

  2. 2.

    See Sacerdote (2001) and Zimmerman (2003) for evidence of peer effects in education.

  3. 3.

    While these outcomes carry clear benefits for individual students, researchers have also performed cost-benefit analyses at aggregate levels, finding that preschool programs provide benefits to society as a whole through cost savings (e.g., reduced spending on expensive special education or juvenile justice programs) and participants’ increased economic productivity in adulthood. Estimates of these societal benefits tend to outweigh preschool operating costs by considerable margins, often on the order of $5 or more of economic return for every $1 spent on pre-kindergarten programs (Duncan et al. 2007; Heckman et al. 2010; Reynolds et al. 2011; Yoshikawa et al. 2013).

  4. 4.

    The Perry project enrolled 58 low-income, Black 3-year-olds in 2.5-h classes that met 5 days per week for the 2 years preceding kindergarten. Members of the treatment group demonstrated multiple advantages relative to the control group in the near-term (e.g., higher IQ scores, increased standardized test performance, better teacher-rated classroom behavior) and in the long-term (e.g., higher high school graduation rates, less involvement in the criminal justice system as adolescents and adults, higher earnings in adulthood) (Schweinhart et al. 2005). Similarly, Abecedarian Project participants, who received pre-kindergarten educational intervention from approximately four months of age until kindergarten entry, experienced improved achievement, attainment, and health outcomes compared to control group members from childhood through adulthood (Campbell and Ramey 2010).

  5. 5.

    34 States require districts to offer half-day kindergarten programs and 12 states require full-day kindergarten. Kindergarten attendance is compulsory in 16 of these states. The age at which children must legally begin attending school varies across states, ranging from five to eight years old. (Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_3.asp)

  6. 6.

    “Academic redshirting,” the practice of voluntarily delaying children’s kindergarten enrollment by one year, has received abundant scholarly and popular attention in recent years. While research evidence suggests that the practice is most common among boys, non-Latino Whites, children from high-SES families, and those whose birthdays fall close to kindergarten enrollment cutoff dates (Bassok and Reardon 2013), estimates of academic redshirting’s prevalence indicate that it is not as widespread as commonly believed, with between 3.5% and 5.6% of U.S. kindergarteners demonstrating delayed enrollment (Bassok and Reardon 2013; Huang 2015; Snyder and Dillow 2013). Increased age at kindergarten enrollment is associated with a host of short-term positive outcomes, including higher achievement (Datar 2006; Datar and Gottfied 2015), improved social-behavioral skills (Datar and Gottfied 2015), and dramatically reduced odds of being diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Dee and Sievertsen 2015), yet evidence for positive long-term effects is scant (Cascio and Schanzenbach 2016; Deming and Dynarski 2008; Lincove and Painter 2006).

  7. 7.

    Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), “High School Transcript Study.” Adapted from: Planty, M., Bozick, R., and Ingels, S.J. (2006). Academic Pathways, Preparation, and Performance — A Descriptive Overview of the Transcripts from the High School Graduating Class of 2003–04 (NCES 2007–316). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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    Michal Kurlaender & Jacob Hibel

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    Barbara Schneider

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Kurlaender, M., Hibel, J. (2018). Students’ Educational Pathways: Aspirations, Decisions, and Constrained Choices Along the Education Lifecourse. In: Schneider, B. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of Education in the 21st Century. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76694-2_16

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