School Context and the Gender Gap in Educational Achievement

Joscha Legewie and Thomas DiPrete

American Sociological Review 77 (3): 463-485

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Today, boys generally underperform relative to girls in schools throughout the industrialized world. Building on theories about gender identity and reports from prior ethnographic classroom observations, we argue that school environment channels conceptions of masculinity in peer culture, fostering or inhibiting boys’ development of anti-school attitudes and behavior. Girls’ peer groups, by contrast, vary less strongly with the social environment in the extent to which school engagement is stigmatized as un-feminine. As a consequence, boys are more sensitive than girls to school resources that create a learning-oriented environment. To evaluate this argument, we use a quasi-experimental research design and estimate the gender difference in the causal effect of peer socioeconomic status (SES) as an important school resource on test scores. Our design is based on the assumption that assignment to 5th-grade classrooms within Berlin’s schools is as good as random, and we evaluate this selection process with an examination of Berlin’s school regulations, a simulation analysis, and qualitative interviews with school principals. Estimates of the effect of SES composition on male and female performance strongly support our central hypothesis, and other analyses support our proposed mechanism as the likely explanation for gender differences in the causal effect.

Terrorist Events and Attitudes toward immigrants:
A Natural Experiment

American Journal of Sociology 118 (5): 1199-1245

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Using a quasi-experimental research design, this study examines the effect of terrorist events on the perception of immigrants across 65 regions from nine European countries. I first elaborate a theoretical argument that explains the effect of events on attitudes toward immigrants, and points at economic conditions, the relative size of the immigrant population, and personal contact with immigrants as conditions that mediate the response to events. To evaluate this argument, I make use of the fact that the terror attack in Bali on October the 12th 2002 occurred during the fieldwork period of the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002. In particular, I use the terror attack as an exogenous source of variation, together with the timing of the interviews, to define the experiment’s treatment and control groups. The findings from this natural experiment reveal considerable cross-national and regional variation in both the magnitude of the causal effect and its temporal duration. In two or less clearly three out of the nine countries for which the fieldwork period coincided with the terror attack in Bali (Portugal, and Poland, and Finland), the estimated causal effect is highly significant and substantial. The analysis on the regional level supports the argument about contextual variations in the response to the event, and a second analysis based on the 2004 Madrid bombing confirms my conclusions. Implications of the findings for societal responses to terror attacks, the literature on attitudes toward immigrants, and survey research are discussed.

High School Environments, STEM Orientations, and the Gender Gap in Science and Engineering Degrees

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Despite the striking reversal of the gender gap in education, women pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees at much lower rates than their male peers do. This study extends existing explanations for these gender differences and examines two important and related dimensions: the life-course timing of a stable gender gap in STEM orientation, and variations across high schools. We argue that the high school years play an important role for gender differences in orientation towards STEM fields as students develop a more realistic and cognitively grounded understanding of their future work lives. During this period, the gender-specific formation of career aspirations is not only shaped by widely shared and hegemonic gender beliefs but also by the local environment in school. Together these two dimensions extend existing explanations of the gender gap in STEM degrees and open concrete avenues for policy intervention. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), we then decompose the gender gap in STEM bachelor degrees and show that the solidification of the gender gap in STEM orientations is largely a process that occurs during the high school years. Far from being a fixed attribute of adolescent development, however, we find that the size of the gender gap in STEM orientation is quite sensitive to local high school influences; going to school at a high school that is supportive of a positive orientation by females towards math and science can reduce the gender gap in STEM bachelor degrees by 25% or more.

Racial Profiling and Use of Force in Police Stops: How Local Events Trigger Periods of Increased Discrimination
American Journal of Sociology 122 (2): 379–424
Racial profiling and the disproportionate use of police force are controversial political issues. I argue that racial bias in the use of force increases after relevant events such as the shooting of a police officer by a black suspect. To examine this argument, I design a natural experiment using data from 3.9 million time and geo-coded pedestrian stops in New York City. The findings show that two fatal shootings of police officers by black suspects increased the use police force against blacks substantially in the days after the shootings. The use of force against whites and Hispanics, however, remained unchanged and there is no evidence for an effect of two other police murders by a white and Hispanic suspect. Aside from the importance for the debate on racial profiling and police use of force, this research reveals a general set of processes where events trigger discriminatory responses.

Figure: Use of Police Force in Stop-and-Frisk Operations, 2011

Publications
Legewie, Joscha (2016): Racial Profiling and Use of Force in Police Stops: How Local Events Trigger Periods of Increased Discrimination. American Journal of Sociology 122 (2): 379–424 [PDF]

Contested Boundaries: Explaining Where Ethno-Racial Diversity Provokes Neighborhood Conflict

Joscha Legewie and Merlin Schaeffer

American Journal of Sociology 122 (1): 125–161

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Concerns about neighborhood erosion and conflict in ethnically diverse settings occupy scholars, policy makers, and pundits alike; but the empirical evidence is inconclusive. This article proposes the contested boundaries hypothesis as a refined contextual explanation focused on poorly defined boundaries between ethnic and racial groups. The authors argue that neighborhood conflict is more likely to occur at fuzzy boundaries defined as interstitial or transitional areas sandwiched between two homogeneous communities. Edge detection algorithms from computer vision and image processing allow them to identify these boundaries. Data from 4.7 million time- and geo-coded 311 service requests from New York City support their argument: complaints about neighbors making noise, drinking in public, or blocking the driveway are more frequent at fuzzy boundaries rather than crisp, polarized borders. By focusing on the broader sociospatial structure, the contested boundaries hypothesis overcomes the "aspatial" treatment of neighborhoods as isolated areas in research on ethnic diversity.

Aggressive Policing and the Educational Performance of Minority Youth

Joscha Legewie and Jeffrey Fagan

American Sociological Review

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An increasing number of minority youth are confronted with the criminal justice system. But how does the expansion of police presence in poor urban communities affect educational outcomes? Previous research points at multiple mechanisms with opposing effects. This article presents the first causal evidence of the impact of aggressive policing on the educational performance of minority youth. Under Operation Impact, the New York Police Department (NYPD) saturated high crime areas with additional police officers with the mission to engage in aggressive, order maintenance policing. To estimate the effect, we use administrative data from about 250,000 adolescents aged 9 to 15 and a Difference-in-Difference approach based on variation in the timing of police surges across neighborhoods. We find that exposure to police surges significantly reduced test scores for African-American boys, consistent with their greater exposure to policing. The size of the effect increases with age but there is no discernible effect for African-American girls and Hispanic students. Aggressive policing can thus lower the educational performance of African-American youth. These findings provide evidence that the consequences of policing extend into key domains of social life, with implications for the educational trajectories of minority youth and social inequality more broadly.

Unfortunately, I can only distribute this paper via email (legal restrictions): Joscha Legewie