Extended Stratification: Immigrant and Native Differences in Individual and Family Labor.

The article outlines a theoretical system of extended stratification in order to account for differences between immigrants and natives in the amount of time individuals devote to paid work and the number of family members participating in paid work. The extended stratification theory contends that because people have different socio-economic frames of reference, they vary in their willingness to work long hours in an effort to achieve modest improvements in their current socioeconomic circumstances. Thus, immigrants from relatively poor societies tend to see their richer host society as abundant in opportunities for getting ahead through hard work. Immigrants will often be more willing than natives to work long hours because they value the economic return more highly than native persons who have been raised in a comparatively rich society. It is not that most immigrants achieve high standards of living when evaluated by the standards of the host society, rather that immigrants often have the opportunity to achieve a considerably higher standard of living in the host society than they could achieve back home

An analysis of the effects of teacher assignment in the Houston Independent School District on student academic achievement

The Singleton Ratio is a court ordered plan requiring the racial makeup of certified employees and teacher aides in every school of a district to roughly represent the racial characteristics of those employees district wide. The ongoing educational process between determinants of student achievement and student achievement outcomes is the avenue through which the Singleton Ratio process may affect student achievement. Faculty desegregation has impacted certain determinants of student academic achievement (e.g., teaching experience of faculty members, the degree of similarity between the ethnic backgrounds of students and teachers). The resulting changes in these determinants of student achievement have, it is alleged by critics of the faculty desegregation policy, tended to lower student and teacher commitment to the educational attainment of students. As a result of lowered commitment among students and teachers, it is further charged that the academic achievement outcomes of students have been lowered. A model has been developed in order to analyze the theoretical process described above. The model considers several determinants of student academic achievement which have been affected by the Singleton Ratio process and observable indicators of student commitment, teacher commitment and student academic achievement. The results of measuring the strengths of the relationships within the model suggest that the Singleton Ratio process has not affected student academic achievement in the elementary grades of the Houston Independent School District.Sociology, Department o

Extended Stratification: Immigrant and Native Differences in Individual and Family Labor

This article outlines a theoretical system of extended stratification in order to account for differences between immigrants and natives in (1) the amount of time individuals devote to paid work and (2) the number of family members participating in paid work. The basic argument is that immigrants with a frame of reference that includes being socialized in a relatively poor sending society tend to have greater work incentive than natives who have been socialized in a richer host society. This variation in work incentive obtains because the economic rewards achieved through additional work are evaluated more highly by groups that have as their frame of reference a comparatively poor society. According to this argument, the intergroup difference in work incentive should obtain even when economic need is held constant. We derived two hypotheses and tested them with a comparative analysis of immigrants and natives, including native coethnics of the immigrants. At the level of the individual and of the household, the findings are largely consistent with the hypotheses