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Reflections on the Meaning of Success • “I think I'm successful now, because I'm happy, you know. I don't have a lot of money, you know. You know, I live paycheck to paycheck, but I'm happy. Because I come home every day to the person I want to be with, you know. I pick up the phone, my parents are still there if I need to talk to them, or if I want to talk to them….. I'm happy, I'm comfortable.” [Ken] • “I think my parents are successful. I mean, they're not rich or anything, but ... They were successful as far as, like, raising all those children, you know. And, you know, even though we did, like, some things, you know, nobody did anything real major, and we all, we all still alive, you know. All of us, still alive.” [Dilan]
And this from Chip, an African American whose drug-dealing brother was gunned down in his sleep by thugs who invaded their house: “It was a month or two months... that I would try to go [to school], but I would leave cause I ... if I felt like I was ... I had to cry, I would leave. I wouldn't cry in front of nobody…. And that's a hurtin feelin when you lose somebody that close.”
Equal Opportunity as “National Myth:” “the life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in almost any other advanced industrial country.” Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate, NYT, 2013
Overlapping Spheres of Influence: Family, Neighborhood and School as Institutional Contexts for Child Development
How Quickly Things Can Change Baltimore Then “In 1950, Baltimore was the sixth-largest city in the country, home to 950,000 people and a thriving manufacturing and shipping industry. As the economic base of Maryland, Baltimore provided 75% of all jobs to workers in the region. Many were manufacturing jobs in textiles and automobile production. The region’s economic powerhouse was the steel industry.”* * Putting Baltimore's People First (2004)
Neighborhood Decline: Deindustrialization … Plus A ‘perfect storm’ “… of crippling trends and tragic events – the dramatic loss of manufacturing jobs and tax base, the ruinous riots of 1967 and 1968; the exodus of first white then African-American, middle class families; the sequential epidemics of heroin, crack cocaine, and HIV; the intensified crime and gang activity that fed and feasted off the drug trade; and the activities of slumlords, property flippers and predatory lenders. The end result has been an ever-deepening cycle of disinvestment and decline.” Annie E. Casey Foundation 2010
Neighborhoods in Decline “The neighborhood (when I was young) was kind of close-knit…and the people that grew up with me were like family. Then I moved from there to West Baltimore … and the neighborhood we had moved to was a rough neighborhood…. It was a lot of drugs, drug activity, a lot of, you know, shooting and homicide, stuff like that going on.” [Floyd] “Where I lived, it was more or less like, I guess you’d say family oriented. Because everybody knew everybody…. When you hear everybody talking about how someone could spank you whether they were family or not. Well, that’s what it was like on the block… and maybe one or two parents was watching us and stuff .... Then after a while the neighborhood started going down ….. Basically the kids were getting badder and badder and …the people you thought was really nice was changing, you know what I mean?” [Sona] “ I saw on TV was what I had, so that’s my idea of family life. It’s as though it’s everybody all together, all loving, …that was how it was, it was family. And then … the area becoming drug-infested, is what really deteriorated my family .... It was the drug game itself that made my life what it was … I was ripped from my family…. So the pain, … it was just a homesick pain. It was, I was missing my family.” [Terry]
Family Advantage: Two Success Narratives 1. Doing Well in School as the Path to Moving Up BA Completion As of Age 28: Children of Middle Class Background: 45% Children of Working Class Background: 4% 2. Doing Well in the Workplace without a College Degree Working in the High Skill – High Wage Industrial Trades: White Men of Working Class Background: 45%, earning $43K African American Men of Working Class Background: 15%, earning $22K
Upward Mobility through School, Age 28 Higher SES Origins Lower SES Origins Highest Degree Enrolled Completed Enrolled Completed % High School Dropout 1.3 1.3 23.2 24.5 % GED 5.7 9.6 13.1 18.5 % High School 5.1 31.2 13.4 29.6 % Certificate/License 7.6 4.5 22.9 17.5 % AA Degree 19.1 3.2 15.3 1.3 % BA Degree 61.1 45.2 12.1 4.1
The Middle Class Advantage in School Outside School: Low Poverty, Safe Neighborhoods Inside School: Low Poverty Enrollments, Strong Academic Programming The School Experience: High test scores; good grades; Low rates of grade retention and special education placements; High level academic course and curricular placements; Strong parental support; Strong academic engagement After High School: Delay parenting, and possibly partnering Fewer practical obstacles
Reading Comprehension Averages over the Five Years of Elementary School, by Family SES Level: A gap of .5 GE in the Fall of First Grade Increases to 3.0 GE by the End of Fifth Grade 550 500 450 400 350 300 250 Fall '82 Spring '83 Spring '84 Spring '85 Spring '86 Spring '87 Low SES High SES
SCHOOL YEAR CUMULATIVE READING COMPREHENSION GAINS 190 190 140 140 90 90 40 40 -10 -10 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 High SES, School Year Low SES, School Year SUMMER CUMULATIVE READING COMPREHENSION GAINS 190 190 140 140 90 90 40 40 -10 -10 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 Low SES, Summer High SES, Summer Sources: Doris Entwisle, Karl Alexander, and Linda Olson, Children, Schools, and Inequality , 1997, Table 3.1
In Pursuit of the AA Degree: Three Community Enrollment Spells Without a Degree Through high school, Kim lived in the same blue collar Baltimore neighborhood. A student at one of the rougher city high schools, she had a baby during her junior year, but graduated on time and in the top ten percent of her class by taking turns attending with the baby’s father. After high school Kim completed two semesters toward an Associates degree at a local community college by taking advantage of on-campus day-care, but then stopped -- a combination of financial pressures and wanting to wait until her daughter was in school full-time. Employee benefits as a receptionist at a law firm later allowed her to complete a semester of law classes at a different community college. Now interested in law, she took classes in legal research and advanced law, thinking to apply her accumulating credits toward a four-year jurisprudence program, but upon marrying and relocating, Kim withdrew from school in 2004 (a decade after high school) with 35 earned credits. Still without an AA degree at age 28, Kim’s goal is a doctoral degree but she expects to make it only as far as the BA. Referring to her responsibilities as a parent, she says: “Just sometimes I get frustrated. Because I like, when I want something, I want it now. You know. I want – and there’s a lot of things that stand in my way. Like, I mean, I don’t mean to say she stands in my way, but she has to come first, you know. I’m sure if I didn’t have her, I probably would be in law school right now.”
Blue Collar Attainment: The Foundations of White Working Class Privilege • Workplace Advantage for Men • Family Advantage for Women 16
Persistence of Occupational Advantage and Disadvantage by Race and Gender: Age 28 Higher SES Origins Lower SES Origins Occupational White Black White Black White Black White Black Overall Overall Type Men Men Women Women Men Men Women Women 14.7 17.1 29.0 5.1 9.7 Exec/manag 2.1 0.0 0.0 8.5 1.2 23.5 20.0 6.5 38.5 25.8 Prof 3.0 4.3 0.0 4.3 3.7 Technical 5.9 2.9 6.5 5.1 9.7 3.0 2.1 1.6 2.1 4.9 8.1 17.1 9.7 5.1 0.0 Sales 9.3 4.3 8.2 12.8 11.1 Clerical 16.9 11.4 6.5 25.6 22.6 21.2 6.4 8.2 23.4 38.3 2.9 2.9 9.7 0.0 0.0 Protective 4.2 0.0 8.2 2.1 4.9 19.1 11.4 16.1 17.9 32.3 Service 22.5 2.1 14.8 34.0 33.3 Craft a 4.4 11.4 6.5 0.0 0.0 13.1 44.7 14.8 2.1 0.0 0.7 2.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 Operator 4.7 10.6 4.9 4.3 1.2 Transport 2.2 2.9 6.5 0.0 0.0 6.8 10.6 14.8 2.1 1.2 1.5 0.0 3.2 2.6 0.0 Laborer 10.2 14.9 24.6 4.3 0.0 (136) (35) (31) (39) (31) (N) (236) (47) (61) (47) (81) 17
White Working Class Privilege through Vocational Development: Those in the BSS with no 4-year College Attendance White Men Black Men Jobs During High School Prop. Quarters Employed in H.S. .33 .20 % in Skilled Crafts 21.0 0.0 Jobs since High School % Full-Time Job First Quarter After High School 51.6 34.8 % Full-Time Job First Year After High School 68.0 49.2 Earnings ($/hr) First Full-Time Job $7.04 $6.54 Age 22 Employment % Employed Full-Time 70.7 54.9 Prop. Quarters Employed Full-Time, End HS to Age 22 .73 .56 % in Skilled Crafts 30.0 8.0 Earnings ($/hr) Full-Time Job $10.30 $9.35 Age 28 Employment % Employed Full-Time 79.4 60.7 Prop. Quarters Employed Full-Time, Last 24 Months .80 .64 % in Skilled Crafts 45.0 15.0 Earning ($/hr) Full-Time Job $20.34 $14.75 Earnings from Work, Previous Year $41,648 $28,700
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