Them That’s Got Shall Have: School Social Capital and Access to Resources in Organizational Fields

• In Event: 153 - Regular Session. School Choice and Market Models of Schooling

Abstract

Partnerships between schools and other organizations are important because these relationships are sources of school social capital. A persistent finding of social capital research is that actors have unequal access to the resources of social capital due to the structure or pattern of relationships between actors in a network. The results from the current study of partnership formation among 211 public high schools and 1,098 partner organizations in New York City from 1999 to 2005 suggest that schools do not have equal access to the resources of school social capital. Schools with greater resource needs, such as having a greater proportion of low SES students, are less likely to have partnerships. Schools with fewer resource needs, such as having a larger proportion of more experienced teachers, are more likely to have partnerships. However, the greatest advantage in forming partnerships results from schools having strong external ties and being more central in the school-partner network. The greatest disadvantage results from schools being structurally equivalent to other schools in the network and thus having to compete for partnerships . These findings suggest schools that are already well-endowed in terms of partnership opportunities are most likely to have partnerships, and schools that are already disadvantaged are least likely to have partnerships.

Author

• Ebony N Bridwell-Mitchell, Harvard University