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  • Eighth Graders and Compliance: Social Capital and School Sector Impacts on the Non-Cognitive Skills of Early Adolescents
    Authors:
    Year: 2011

  • Abstract:
    Estimates obtained from the first nationally representative longitudinal study of students in the United States in grades K-8, robust to both probit and propensity score matching models, provide empirical support for James Coleman’s social capital theory of Catholic school impacts on student behavior. Catholic schooling has a positive impact on the academic engagement, homework completion, tardiness, absenteeism, class attentiveness, and disruptive behavior of 8th graders. It has a negative impact on student assessments of their self-esteem. Little discernable impact on other psychological traits is observed. Data come from the U.S. Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (K-8) initiated in 1998. All impacts are observed after controlling for numerous background characteristics and for 1st grade math and reading scores.

    This paper is published in a book from the Harvard Education Press.
    Download the chapter’s appendix above.


The NCSC is funded by a 5 year, $13.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. Its lead institution is Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. The center is housed on the campus of Peabody College, one of the nation's top graduate schools of education.