The thing about schools: A multilevel analysis of the educational attainment of Mexican Americans

Citation

Sheftel, Mara Getz & Okigbo, Karen Amaka (2016). The thing about schools: A multilevel analysis of the educational attainment of Mexican Americans. 2016 Add Health Users Conference. Bethesda, MD.

Abstract

Building on the body of literature seeking to understand the educational trajectories and social mobility of post-1965 immigrants to America, this analysis looks at how school characteristics impact the educational attainment of Mexican Americans. Using multilevel analysis of the nationally representative, longitudinal Add Health dataset we parse out the relative impact of a wide range of factors including: school type, size, demographic composition, school SES, academic culture, social culture and student body deviance on years of educational attainment. Consistent with literature on the impact of school academic culture on educational attainment, we find here that school level academic culture has a significant and positive impact on individual educational attainment. However, our study shows that for students of Mexican descent this relationship is not so straightforward, because the returns on school academic culture are considerably less for Mexican Americans than their non-Hispanic white peers.

URL

https://addhealth.cpc.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/docs/events/2016%20Add%20Health%20Users%20Conference%20Abstracts_2016_06_16.pdf

Reference Type

Conference proceeding

Book Title

2016 Add Health Users Conference

Author(s)

Sheftel, Mara Getz
Okigbo, Karen Amaka

Year Published

2016

City of Publication

Bethesda, MD

Reference ID

6366