This paper, published in 1912, analyzes the argument that the effectiveness of a school and its teachers must be measured in terms of the results secured by the school. It looks at how applied science may avail to better educational practices, similar to industrial activity.
LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.
Laggards in Our Schools presents the findings of a 1907 study on disabled children and the effects of education on their early years. The study analyzed the specifics of the children’s’ conditions and what factors caused them to drop behind in school, as well as to what extent attendance, homework, and other methods affected progress.
LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.
Published in 1920, this report presents an index for measuring the effectiveness of state school systems by the amount of education received by the children and the expenditures made to purchase this education. The purpose of the index is to make it possible for state school systems to measure their progress from year to year and to compare their attainments with those of their neighbors.
LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.
Published in 1913, The Effect of Promotion Rates on School Efficiency presents findings that illustrate the great importance of small differences in promotion rates in education, particularly the degree to which children are trained in habits of success and failure.
LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.
This pamphlet explores constant occupations, occupations which offer opportunities for employment to a number of workers in a variety of areas, rather than site-specific, less constant, or variable occupations, and their implications on vocational education.
LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.
This article offers an evaluation of the Binet-Simon Measuring Scale for Intelligence, a 1908 series of tests developed by French psychologists for the diagnosis of the level of intelligence of children. The scale had widespread application at the time, with minor variations to adapt to the needs of American children. By assessing each test and determining a number of flaws, such as overemphasis on “puzzle tests,” the author argues that, beyond small adjustments, an entirely new measuring scale is needed to test intellectual performance.
LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.
A look into the rising cost of education, Trends of School Costs was published in 1920. It analyzes the different aspects at play in the cost of public school education, including the relationship between growing attendance rates and cost. Of prime importance are trends in teachers' salaries, compared to the cost of living and the salaries of other workers. Future pricing trends are predicted.
W. RANDOLPH BURGUESS, Department of Education, Russell Sage Foundation
Disparities in educational achievement and attainment between low- and high-income students have grown over the last four decades—an era of rising economic inequality. Some evidence has linked increased inequality and disparities in educational outcomes, but the mechanisms by which this occurs are much less clear.
In the course of its television lifetime, "Sesame Street" has taught alphabet-related skills to hundreds of thousands of preschool children. But the program may have attracted more of its regular viewers from relatively affluent homes in which the parents were better educated. Analyzing and reevaluating data drawn from several sources, principally the Educational Testing Service's evaluations of "Sesame Street," the authors of this book open fresh lines of inquiry into how much economically disadvantaged children learned from viewing the series for six months and into whether the program is widening the gap that separates the academic achievement of disadvantaged preschoolers from that of their more affluent counterparts. The authors define as acute dilemma currently facing educational policymakers: what positive results are achieved when a large number of children learn some skills at a younger age if this absolute increase in knowledge is associated with an increase in the difference between social groups?
THOMAS D. COOK is Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair of Ethics and Justice and professor of sociology, psychology, and education and social policy at Northwestern University.
“Douglas Massey and Stefanie Brodmann provide an ambitious and rigorous examination of how inequality exerts its influence in the lives of young Americans. Analyzing a national longitudinal study and focusing on multiple social contexts—including school, religion, peers, and neighborhoods—the authors discover important new facts and evaluate competing explanations for a diverse set of outcomes. Whether about depression, crime, sexual behavior, obesity, drinking, or human capital attainment, the results are fascinating. Spheres of Influence should be required reading for social scientists and policymakers seeking comprehensive knowledge on the social ecology of class and race inequality.”
—Robert J. Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University
“Spheres of Influence is a pathbreaking book exposing the vast complexities in how race and class intersect in affecting development and well-being as people move from adolescence into adulthood in the United States. The comprehensiveness of the theory and findings about the ways that highly diverse social ecologies of family, school, neighborhood, peers, and religion set the stage for vast inequalities in social outcomes is unparalleled.”
—Lauren J. Krivo, professor of sociology and criminal Justice, Rutgers University
The black-white divide has long haunted the United States as a driving force behind social inequality. Yet, the civil rights movement, the increase in immigration, and the restructuring of the economy in favor of the rich over the last several decades have begun to alter the contours of inequality. Spheres of Influence, co-authored by noted social scientists Douglas S. Massey and Stefanie Brodmann, presents a rigorous new study of the intersections of racial and class disparities today. Massey and Brodmann argue that despite the persistence of potent racial inequality, class effects are drastically transforming social stratification in America.
This data-intensive volume examines the differences in access to material, symbolic, and emotional resources across major racial groups. The authors find that the effects of racial inequality are exacerbated by the class differences within racial groups. For example, when measuring family incomes solely according to race, Massey and Brodmann found that black families’ average income measured $28,400, compared to Hispanic families’ $35,200. But this gap was amplified significantly when class differences within each group were taken into account. With class factored in, inequality across blacks’ and Hispanics’ family incomes increased by a factor of almost four, with lower class black families earning an average income of only $9,300 compared to $97,000 for upper class Hispanics. Massey and Brodmann found similar interactions between class and racial effects on the distribution of symbolic resources, such as occupational status, and emotional resources, such as the presence of a biological father—across racial groups. Although there are racial differences in each group’s access to these resources, like income, these disparities are even more pronounced once class is factored in.
The complex interactions between race and class are apparent in other social spheres, such as health and education. In looking at health disparities across groups, Massey and Brodmann observed no single class effect on the propensity to smoke cigarettes. Among whites, cigarette smoking declined with rising class standing, whereas among Hispanics it increased as class rose. Among Asians and blacks, there was no class difference at all. Similarly, the authors found no single effect of race alone on health: Health differences between whites, Asians, Hispanics, and blacks were small and non-significant in the upper class, but among those in the lower class, intergroup differences were pronounced.
As Massey and Brodmann show, in the United States, a growing kaleidoscope of race-class interactions has replaced pure racial and class disadvantages. By advancing an ecological model of human development that considers the dynamics of race and class across multiple social spheres, Spheres of Influence sheds important light on the factors that are currently driving inequality today.
DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School.
STEFANIE BRODMANN is an economist at the Social Protection and Labor Unit of the World Bank.
