Erratum: Who Gets Ahead and Who Falls Behind During the Transition to High School? Academic Performance at the Intersection of Race/Ethnicity and Gender.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1093/socpro/spx044.].

Who Gets Ahead and Who Falls Behind During the Transition to High School? Academic Performance at the Intersection of Race/Ethnicity and Gender.

Academic stratification during educational transitions may be maintained, disrupted, or exacerbated. This study marks the first to use national data to investigate how the transition to high school (re)shapes academic status at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender. We seek to identify the role of the high school transition in shaping racial/ethnic and gender stratification by contextualizing students' academic declines during the high school transition within the longer window of their educational careers. Using Add Health, we find that white and black boys experience the greatest drops in their grade point averages (GPAs). We also find that the maintenance of high academic grades between the eighth and ninth grades varies across racial/ethnic and gender subgroups; higher-achieving middle school black boys experience the greatest academic declines. Importantly, we find that white and black boys also faced academic declines before the high school transition, whereas their female student peers experienced academic declines only during the transition to high school. We advance current knowledge on educational stratification by identifying the transition to high school as a juncture in which boys' academic disadvantage widens and high-achieving black boys lose their academic status at the high school starting gate. Our study also underscores the importance of adopting an intersectional framework that considers both race/ethnicity and gender. Given the salience of high school grades for students' long-term success, we discuss the implications of this study for racial/ethnic and gender stratification during and beyond high school.

High School Transfer Students and the Transition to College: Timing and the Structure of the School Year.

The timing of a high school transfer may shape students' transitions to college through its (mis)alignment with the structure of the school year. A transfer that occurs during the summer interrupts the four-year high school career, whereas a transfer that occurs midyear disrupts both the four-year high school career and the structure of the school year. Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS), the investigators find that the penalty suffered after the transfer depends on the degree to which students' high school pathways synchronize with the curricular and extracurricular structure of the school year. Midyear transfer students appear to suffer the greatest postsecondary matriculation penalty. Students who transfer midyear are less likely to attend a four-year college compared with nontransfer and summer transfer students, whereas summer transfer students are less likely to attend a highly selective four-year college compared with their nontransfer counterparts. Curricular and extracurricular disruptions that transfer students experience after their school move explain some, but not all, of the negative associations observed between transferring and the transition to college. Directions for future research and the theoretical and policy implications of the results are discussed.

Following Different Pathways: Social Integration, Achievement, and the Transition to High School.

This study expands research on an academic and social turning point for adolescents, the transition to high school, by analyzing how students' level of social integration into school can affect high school academic performance. Using nationally representative data, three different pathways emerged as students transition to high school, characterized by varying amounts of disruption and opportunity for new social relationships upon entering high school. Findings suggest that elements of middle school social integration, including teacher bonding, popularity, and extracurricular participation, affect academic achievement when students enter high school. However, the association between integration into school and academic performance appears to be contingent upon the pathway students follow.

Family Transitions and Adolescent Severe Emotional Distress: The Salience of Family Context.

We use the life course perspective to argue that family transitions like divorce and remarriage are turning points in adolescents' lives and that emotional distress associated with these events are shaped by the circumstances surrounding them. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we explore how family transitions net of family structure are related to two types of emotional distress, acute depressive symptoms and excessive binge drinking, and whether family context moderates these associations. We find that going through a family transition is related to both outcomes, but only under certain circumstances. As maternal-adolescent emotional distance increases, the probability of severe emotional distress following a family transition increases. In addition, transitioning out of a single mother versus a mother-father household is related to a lower probability of reporting acute depressive symptoms.