36. Or, as Katherine Mooney put it: “Kids like Wendy grew up expecting their parents’ help and support in certain areas but not in all areas. Kids like Stacey grew up expecting their parents’ intervention in every aspect of their lives, whether they asked for help or not” (emphasis in the original, personal communication, September 17, 2010). I am grateful to her for this point.
37. See Stevens, Creating a Class, for a detailed account of how public schools differ in their preparation to receive admissions officers from a liberal arts college. See also Peter Cookson and Caroline Persell, Preparing for Power; Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, Best of the Best; Jerome Karabel, The Chosen.
38. See Lareau and Weininger, “Concerted Cultivation Continues.”
39. Research using participant-observation is usually restricted to a small sample. This limits the possibility of strong conclusions about how economic resources and cultural knowledge and interventions affect life chances. Although some of the middle-class families, including the Marshalls, felt stressed financially, they had more resources than the working-class or poor families. Even if Stacey had not received a full scholarship, it is very likely that she would have attended college. Both her parents were college graduates, Stacey’s grades were high, and she was highly motivated to attend. Other middle-class parents contributed significant sums to their children’s education. The Williamses paid Ivy League tuition, room, and board for Alexander. The Handlons paid $8,200 for Melanie’s 15-month course in cosmetology. Melanie now works at a low-cost-chain hair-cutting salon where, on a good day, she earns $80 in tips (she also receives a small salary). She hopes to open her own franchise; her parents seem willing to help with this venture, if they can afford it. Working-class families also helped their children with educational expenses. As noted elsewhere, Ms. Driver planned to get a second job to pay for Wendy’s college, and Tyrec’s parents covered many of his school expenses. Although it is very difficult to untangle economic and cultural factors, one possible thought experiment is to imagine the changes that could happen if a working-class or poor family won the lottery. The changes that could happen in the next few days or weeks could be reasonably tied to economic factors. It is unlikely, however, that working-class and poor families would be able to acquire knowledge about the inner workings of institutions such as schools or adopt middle-class practices in terms of the management of their children’s lives outside the home. Thus, there are signs that economic factors and cultural factors have some independence from one another.
40. See Thomas A. DiPrete et al., “Segregation in Social Networks Based on Acquaintanceship and Trust,” for evidence that social networks in the United States are quite stratified, with people socializing with others in very similar social positions. Thus, it is hard for many working-class families to have access to informal knowledge widely shared in middle-class networks about educational institutions.
41. Admission procedures vary enormously; some colleges, particularly nonselective ones, have a less rigid application timeline than more elite schools. Note that Wendy’s decision to not go to college was made in the summer. Her pregnancy did not occur until December of what would have been her freshman year in college, hence it did not figure into her decision.
42. See chapter 6 in Annette Lareau, Home Advantage, for an analysis of how parents’ education, prestige, and income play a crucial role in facilitating parent involvement in schooling. See also Diane Reay, Gill Crozier, and David James, White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling. Janice Bloom found that even in a small school explicitly devoted to helping working-class youth apply to college, numerous challenges arose. Working-class youth and their parents sometimes had insufficient levels of knowledge and economic resources to manage aspects of the higher education application and process. One working-class student, for example, was accepted at an elite school and was awarded a financial aid package, but the “technology fee,” which came late in August, nearly derailed the student’s transition to college. Parents also tended not to differentiate between lists of items considered by the college to be optional (such as supplies for decorating a dorm room) and required items (such as course textbooks). They considered all the listed items requirements. (Bloom, personal communication, October 15, 2010).
43. See Lareau and Cox, “Social Class and the Transition to Adulthood.”
44. Many factors contributed to working-class and poor parents’ dependence on educators, including the lack of educational skills of the parents, the paucity of educational professionals in their informal networks, and limited economic resources to hire outside consultants. For a discussion of how social class shapes parent involvement in schooling see, among others, Lareau, Home Advantage.
45. In Producing Success, Peter Demerath documents demands that parents place on teachers in an upper-middle-class community.
46. Scott N. Brooks analyzes mentorship patterns in Black Men Can’t Shoot, his study of youth basketball. He shows that such transfers across high schools are common. Brooks also shows how older male coaches sponsor players. Brooks provides additional evidence of a city-wide ranking in basketball talent; this ranking supports Harold’s contention that he could have been seen as an outstanding player in the city without being on a high school team. Brooks also suggests, however, the importance of players being willing to defer to the expertise of the older coaches, comply with requests, and show signs of being “coachable.” It is not possible to assess Harold’s responsiveness to coaching directives. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, “Estimated Probability of Competing in Athletics Beyond the High School Interscholastic Level,” reports that 3% of high school seniors playing basketball will play ball in college. Only three out of 10,000 high school seniors will ultimately be recruited to professional basketball in the United States. For a more general discussion of sports and social patterns, see David Karen and Robert E. Washington’s collection, The Sport and Society Reader.
47. Ms. Yanelli’s story went further:
MS. YANELLI: He [the principal] said to me, “You and your son get out.” And he walked up, and he opened the door for us to leave, and there were like five other people sitting there who he had called down. See he was allowed to call in who he wanted to call in, but we weren’t allowed to call who we wanted to call. And he opened the door, and as we were walking by, he said to me, “I hope you and your fucking son croak”—or die, or something, one of them. And when he said it, my whole body started shaking. And my knees shaking. And I was like, “I don’t believe this man just said this to me.” And people heard him say it. They heard him say it. And they didn’t care. Like the secretaries that were working there.
ANNETTE: Did they look up at all?
MS. YANELLI: Yeah, they looked up and they looked away. And we went storming out. So then I came home and I called the school and I said, “I had a tape recorder and I just want you to know that what that principal said to me, I know he said. It’s on tape.” Which was really stupid of me because . . . I was trying to bluff him, but I forgot I went through that metal detector.
48. This district employee also raised the possibility of Billy quitting school. Ms. Yanelli recalled, “She said, ‘Would you like your son to quit school?’ And he was almost at the sixteen-year-old point at that time, and I said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. I would rather him be done at that point.’ ” See Michelle Fine, Framing Dropouts, on how educators “push out” some youth, encouraging them to drop out.