Do Family Engagement Programs Reproduce Social Capital Inequality in Low Income, Hispanic Elementary

Schools?Alyn Turner McCarty

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Overview

• Examine how schools invest in parent social capital – Test effects of a randomized field experiment of an

after-school program called Families and Schools Together

– Observational versus experimental design

• Focus on early social environments of children in high poverty, predominantly Hispanic communities

Overview

• Test for heterogeneity of program effects by prior social capital measured at two levels: family and school

• Consider three possible impacts of the program on social capital inequality– Compensatory hypothesis– Cumulative advantage hypothesis– Maintained inequality hypothesis

Overview

• Preview of findings: – Results of experiment have contradictory

implications for patterns of inequality• Intervention builds social capital more for families who are

initially more socially isolated than for families who are initially more socially connected

• Intervention effect on social capital is more pronounced in schools in which parent networks are initially stronger than in schools where parent networks are initially weaker

Social Capital

• Broadly defined, social capital refers to obligations and expectations, information, and norms, that inhere in social relations (Coleman, 1988).

• Conceptualized as a property of social networks, which individuals can access by virtue of network membership

Social Capital

• Family-level social capital – Access to a network of other parents– Reflects the social connectivity and social resources in

a child’s home environment– Parents can “invest” to promote their child’s

development • School-level social capital – Property of parent

networks– Represents the collective resources and normative

environment of the school – Schools can “invest” to boost academic and behavioral

outcomes of their student populations

Social Capital

• Potential benefits of social capital– Information flow, social control (Carbonaro

1999; Coleman 1990)– Collective efficacy (Cucchiara and Horvat

2009; Sampson et al 1997)– Social/emotional support and advice (Thoits

2011; Cohen 2004)• Psychological well-being

Social Capital Inequality

• Considerable amount of work has posited that social capital may be a key mechanism of the reproduction of inequality along familiar dimensions of stratification (Lin 2000)– By race/ethnicity (Stanton-Salazar 2001; Zhou and

Bankston 1994)– By social class (Horvat, Weininger, and Lareau 2003;

Lareau 1987)– And, more recently, by gender (McCarty and Shoji, in

progress)

• Family engagement programs may be an important policy lever through which schools can promote strong parent networks

• While family engagement programs are associated with positive outcomes on average, few studies have examined:– Effect of programs on social capital– Variation in the influence of programs

Family Engagement Programs

Research Questions

• Do family engagement programs promote social capital?

• Does the effect vary in ways that may increase or decrease existing social capital inequality?

Research Questions• H1: Family engagement programs reduce social

capital inequality– “Compensatory hypothesis”

• H2: Family engagement programs exacerbate social capital inequality– “Cumulative advantage hypothesis”

• H3: Family engagement programs maintain social capital inequality– “Maintained inequality hypothesis”

Intervention Approach

• Explore variation in the effects of a popular family engagement program called Families and Schools Together

• Treatment administered at the school-level, appropriate for research question about social capital within school communities

• Random assignment of 26 schools to “treatment” and 26 schools to “control”

Data Source

• Children, Families, and Schools (CFS) Study– 52 low-income elementary schools– Phoenix, AZ and San Antonio, TX– 3,084 first graders and their families

• Predominantly low-income, Hispanic population*

FAST

• Families and Schools Together (FAST)– Research-based after-school program

• universally recruited 1st grade families• 8 weeks of weekly meetings at schools• 2 years of monthly meetings

– Designed to strengthen bonds• parents and school staff• parents and other parents• parents and children

Measures

• Parent pre-FAST and post-FAST surveys– Parent responses to questions about the

structure and quality of their social connections with other parents• How many parents of your child’s friends do you

know?• To what extent do other parents share your

expectations for your child?• Extent to which you and other parents reciprocate

favors and social support?

Measures

• Family-level social capital – “Access to social capital” or “Social

connectedness”– Composite of three dimensions, alpha = 0.72– Standardized (mean = 0, std = 1)

• School-level social capital– “School social capital”– Aggregated school-level measure– Standardized (mean = 0, std = 1)

Do family engagement programs promote social capital?

Research Question #1

Coefficient SE t-statistic

FAST (γ01) 0.206 0.039 6.27

FAST Effect on Social Capital

Note: Models control for study design effects and pre-treatment differences in social capital at family and school-levels.

Do effects vary in ways that may increase or decrease existing social capital inequality?

Research Question #2

Inequality in FAST Participation

Coefficient SE t-statistic

FAST 0.204 0.037 6.41

Pre-FAST SC Access

0.700 0.024 29.12

Interaction -0.069 0.032 -2.15

Pre-FAST SC Aggregate

-0.018 0.022 0.368

Interaction 0.124 0.029 3.17

Predicted Access to Social Capital

Predicted Access to Social Capital

School: Low School: Medium School: High

Family: Low 0.1276478 0.243864 0.36008

Family: Medium

0.0644907 0.1807068 0.2969229

Family: High 0.00133360000000005

0.1175496 0.2337658

0.03

0.08

0.13

0.18

0.23

0.28

0.33

0.38

FA

ST

Eff

ect

in S

D U

nit

s

Proportion Graduated from FAST

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q50.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

0.35

0.40

0.19 0.2

0.26 0.26

0.31

Quintiles of Access to Social Capital

Proportion Graduated from FAST

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q50.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

0.35

0.40

0.230.27

0.29 0.29

0.37

Quintiles of Access to Social Capital

Summary of Findings

• FAST increases social capital by strengthening parent-based social networks

• While the effect is more pronounced for families who are initially less connected,

• The effect is largest in schools with strong parent networks.

• Families are most likely to participate if they already have strong connections to other parents at the school

• But, pre-existing connections only moderately predictive of participation.

Summary of Findings

Discussion

• Prior work emphasizes that disadvantaged communities lack social capital that can be used as a resource for parents and children.

• But, what happens when schools provide opportunities to build social capital within these communities?

Discussion• Programs that address the structural and

cultural reasons why families do not usually participate in school-based activities have the potential to facilitate resourceful social ties with other parents with children at the school.

Discussion• Although parents who are more socially

connected are more likely to participate, families who are less socially connected benefit more from participation.

• The better programs are at engaging families who would otherwise lack access to school-based parent network social capital, the more they can promote inclusion and equality in the distribution of community-based social resources.

Discussion• Schools with pre-existing social capital may be

best able to implement FAST because they are able to draw on the resources that are embedded in parent networks.

• I show that building social capital equitably requires taking stock of existing resources, both among individuals and at the group level by examining the effects of a program by pre-existing levels of social capital among families and across schools.

This work is supported by dissertation grants from:• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation• American Education Research Association• UW-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty

Acknowledge additional support from: • Institute of Education Sciences (Grant No. R305C05005)• NIH training grants:

– UW-Madison Center for Demography and Ecology (Grant No. R24HD047873)– Center for Demography of Health and Aging (Grant No. P30AG17266)– Center for Women’s Health and Health Disparities Research (5T32HD049302-08)

This research uses restricted use data from the Children, Families, and Schools study, a project designed by Adam Gamoran, Lynn McDonald Ruth Lopez Turley, and Carmen Valdez and funded the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (Grant No. 1R01HD051762-01A2).

Thank you!