Poster #224 - Cross-Class Friendship and Academic Achievement in Middle School

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Background. Academic achievement disparities based on socioeconomic status (SES) widen significantly during the middle school years (Caro, McDonald & Willms, 2009). Students’ whose parents have less advanced education, in particular, perform more poorly than their peers on standard measures of achievement (e.g., test scores, grades; Huston & Bentley, 2010; Sirin, 2005) and are five times more likely to drop out of school (Chapman, Laird, Ifill & KewallRamani, 2011). Given the heightened developmental significance of friendship during adolescence (Collins & Laursen, 2004), in the current study we examined how cross-class friendship – that is, close relationships between socioeconomically dissimilar peers – relate to class-based achievement differences. It was expected that cross-class friendship would function much like social capital (cf. Crosnoe, Cavanagh & Elder, 2003) and attenuate the link between parental education and academic achievement in middle school.

Method. The current sample was drawn from a longitudinal study (N=5,991; 51% female) of ethnically diverse youth in 26 California urban middle schools. For each participant, the parent/guardian who completed informed consent indicated his/her highest level of education with five options ranging from “no high school diploma” to “graduate degree.” A 2-point difference in the parent education (e.g., high school diploma and graduate degree) of a participant and reciprocated friend was coded as cross-class. Academic achievement was assessed during sixth grade (as baseline covariates) and seventh grade (as outcomes) using grade point average (GPA) and standardized achievement test scores from school records, as well as teacher-reports of academic engagement.

Results. About half (47%) of students had at least one cross-class friendship at sixth grade. Multilevel (within-school) analyses (displayed in Table 1) revealed that relative to students whose parents had a college degree, students with less educated parents (i.e., no high school diploma, high school diploma, some college) received lower grades, standardized test scores and were rated by their teachers as less academically engaged. However, significant parental education X cross-class friendship interactions indicated that the association between parental education and GPA (see Figure 1), achievement test scores, as well as academic engagement, was attenuated when students had at least one cross-class friendship. Differences in achievement between those with and without a cross-class friendship were nonsignificant for students with parents of higher education levels.

Conclusions. The current findings suggest that class-based achievement disparities are substantial when students’ friendships are segregated by family background (i.e., no cross-class friendships) and smaller when students have at least one cross-class friendship. Additional research is needed to understand the mechanisms through which cross-class friendship can facilitate achievement (e.g., direct assistance, modeling), as well as factors that can promote the formation of ties between socioeconomically dissimilar peers. These findings are important at the time of increasing socioeconomic segregation in U.S. schools (Altonji & Mansfield, 2011; Owens, Reardon & Jencks, 2016; Reardon, 2013).

Authors

• Leah Lessard, University of California, Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Jaana Juvonen, University of California - Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author