Browsing by Author "Lopez Turley, Ruth"

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    Cycles of Punishment: Understanding the mechanisms and relationship between school suspensions and juvenile justice and how it varies by student identity
    (2021-05-12) Duffy, Horace Joseph; Lopez Turley, Ruth
    The school-to-prison pipeline, or the relationship between school discipline and juvenile justice contact, has interested researchers and educational practitioners primary because of the negative impacts punishment can have on the life outcomes of students. Using a unique dataset of matched school and juvenile justice data, this dissertation challenges the “pipeline” or uni-directional flow of youth punishment and finds that punishment operates in a cycle. In three chapters this dissertation examines (1) when students face suspensions and juvenile justice contact, (2) the relationship between suspensions and juvenile justice contact, and (3) tests the theoretical explanations of the relationship of youth punishment. Generally, I find black and Latinx students have higher risks of youth punishment in all grade levels, but most importantly early grades, and that while a school suspension increases the chances of juvenile justice contact, students also have increased odds of subsequent after juvenile justice contact. Evidence of critical race, cumulative disadvantage, and labeling theories support a new theory that youth become caught in a “cycle of punishment” rather than a school-to-prison pipeline.
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    Finding La Raza in the Suburbs: Race, Place, and Schooling in a Latino-majority Suburb
    (2024-07-16) Szabo, Julia Colleen Campbell; Lopez Turley, Ruth; Rhodes, Anna
    As American suburbs become increasingly diverse, a growing share of Latino families call them home. In 2020, 61% of Latinos living in major metropolitan areas lived in the suburbs, including ethnic suburbs or ethnoburbs that are majority Latino. Latino-majority suburbs upend assumptions about race, class, and nativity in suburbia, offering a strategic case to explore the residential selection and suburban schooling experiences of families in this new iteration of a contemporary suburb. This dissertation examines these dynamics in a Latino-majority suburb and school district in Houston, Texas, which I call Arroyo. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 70 parents and 40 educators in district middle schools, I examine why families and educators came to live and teach in Arroyo and their schooling experiences and schooling decisions once there. I find that family, co-ethnicity, and schools were important factors drawing families to Arroyo but that the bundle of factors and perceived benefits of co-ethnicity varied by immigrant generation and race. Additionally, I demonstrate that educators’ narratives of district choice and narratives of Latino students and families varied by educator race, as Latino and white educators drew on distinct lived experiences in Arroyo and closeness to the Latino community. These varied narratives were consequential because they informed educators’ classroom and family engagement practices, leading some to adopt practices that affirm and include Latino families, and others, practices that blame and exclude them. Finally, I illustrate that school dissatisfaction led some families to exit the school district, given unresolved challenges related to bullying, safety, and academics in district middle schools. However, mobility was a poor proxy for dissatisfaction in the sample broadly, as some dissatisfied families chose to stay despite facing similar challenges, and other satisfied families left the district in response to new opportunities and constraints. This research contributes to our understanding of the residential selection and schooling experiences within Latino-majority suburbs, pointing to their perceived protective promise for Latino families and the challenge of living up to this promise in racially changed suburban schools.
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    How do High-Status Parents Choose Schools? Evidence from a Choice District
    (2015-01-30) Bancroft, Amanda; Lopez Turley, Ruth; Bratter, Jenifer; Chavez, Sergio
    One premise of contemporary school choice is that parents largely use academic quality indicators – loosely referred to as “accountability data” – to choose schools. This premise does not sufficiently account for the role of other mechanisms in parents’ decision-making that have been emphasized by other scholars, such as racial prejudice or network information. This project aims to highlight the mechanisms which are most important in the school choice narratives of high-status parents in a large, southern city. This population was sampled because of their above-average economic capital and social privilege and their capacity to access and use accountability data, which increase their ability to navigate school and residential markets. Participant data from in-depth, qualitative interviews highlight alternatives to the assumption that parents primarily or exclusively use accountability data to choose where to send their children to school. Specifically, parents’ color-blind “cultural logics,” which include collective ideals, constructs, and stereotypes about race, emerge as key elements in parents’ school choices and how they later explain those choices. A discussion of the data will suggest that these collective mechanisms are meaningful for parent choice, and may have unintended consequences for school choice programs within racially diverse and segregated districts.
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    Latinx Parents' Perceptions of Traditional Public Schools and Charter School Choice
    (2020-05-26) Szabo, Julia C.C.; Lopez Turley, Ruth
    This paper examines the experiences within and perceptions of traditional public schools that led Latinx parents to enroll their children in a charter school, Houston College Prep Charter (HCP Charter). Data include in-depth interviews with thirty-one families who have selected HCP Charter for their middle school aged children, participant observation at school events and parent association meetings, and school accountability data. Latinx parents view their selection of HCP Charter as a means to remove their children from the “risky” public-school environments available to them. This perception of risk is based on the experience of children and parents within public schools, as well as information gained from parents’ networks, media, and lived experiences. Decisions to enroll children in HCP Charter reflect the belief it is worth “trying out” charter schools, given the risk they associate with the traditional public-school options available to them.
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    Wealth Strain’s Role in Generating Educational Inequality: Theory, Mechanisms, and Effects
    (2018-04-17) Bancroft, Amanda N.; Lopez Turley, Ruth; Yarbrough, Fay
    Wealth predicts important social phenomena, from health outcomes, to educational attainment, to property ownership. Sociologists have addressed wealth in empirical work, but the use of wealth measures is limited by current data collection practices and potential inaccuracies in such data (Spilerman 2000; Killewald 2013; Pfeffer 2014). The first chapter of this project focuses on wealth as it exists in the literature and what it has brought to the field (such greater predictive power than typical SES dummy measures, as well as intergenerational analysis). I argue for the importance of wealth data for understanding intergenerational inequality, especially for sociologists of education and those within education RPPs. Chapter two attends to wealth strain, factors that preclude families from generating wealth. Using interviews of 66 high school seniors in a high-poverty, majority-minority district, I find that families deal with variety of types of strain, and that strain has an impact on where students decide to attend school. Specifically, I find that strain is understood and acted upon differently based on student gender. Young men view postsecondary as a means to a financial end for their families and aim to complete programs more quickly in order to begin making money to support them. Young women, on the other hand, are more likely to be tied to their families through care and emotion work and tend to enroll in programs close to home in order to continue this work. Chapter 3 uses county tax assessor data, combined with student level data, to predict postsecondary selectivity for a sample of college enrollees in 2015 and 2016. I find that non-white households must acquire more housing wealth to attain the same level of college selectivity as their white peers. I also find higher selectivity outcomes for 2016 graduates, suggesting at least a partial effect of standardized college advising throughout the district, which was received by 2016 graduates, but not 2015 graduates. Findings suggest racial and socioeconomic differences in the return on investment in home equity, the persistence of racialized valuation of housing, and hint at the importance of wealth for postsecondary outcomes.