sociology exam 4 part 7
In 2010, approximately ____________ percent of American adults over age 25 had a college degree.
19
In 2010, women earned ____________ percent of graduate degrees.
60
Which of the following scenarios best illustrates "stereotype threat"?
Antoine, a blacks student at Yale University, is nervous about taking the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). He fears that if is score is low, he will confirm negative perceptions about the intelligence of black men. His fear then affects his performance
Which of the following best illustrates the concept of cultural capital?
Joshua and sam have both earned bachelor's degrees from a local university and ar enow interviewing for the same job. When Joshua goes into the job interview, he is able to discuss art, architecture and travel experiences he had while growing up. Sam has not had these same experiences and is not able to have the same kind of conversations with the interviewers
Which of the following would NOT be an example of social capital?
a high percentage of students at St. Marty's Academy individually take music lessons and are taking college preparatory classes
All of the following are among the best practices for effective teaching listed by Langlois and Zales EXCEPT:
adopting strategies to entourage students to share compliments and insults
Which of the following statements is FALSE?
affirmative action mostly benefits white male students
Which of the following is most likely to be a conflict perspective argument about why education levels have continually risen in the United States over the course of the last century?
as education became more common for all people, social elites needed to obtain more education in order to set themselves apart from others
In part because of their educational success, which group has been called the "model minority" in America?
asian american
If affirmative action programs were eliminated, which group would most likely see an increase in chances of admission to elite colleges and universities?
asian students
Espenshade, Chung, and Walling (2004) studied admission to elite colleges and found that Group A was four times more likely to gain admission, and Group B was three times more likely to be admitted. Groups A and B are, respectively:
athletes and legacy students
Marilee Jones, former dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), resigned from her position in April 2007 after it came to light that she had fabricated her academic record and claimed to have academic degrees she did not have. While this is an extreme case, it illustrates the overemphasis on qualifications such as college degrees in order to be hired for a job. This is known as:
credentialism
According to Espenshade and Chung (2005), eliminating affirmative action programs would do which of the following?
decrease black and hispanic admission acceptance rates by one-half to two-thirds
According to Bourdieu, the three types of cultural capital are:
embodied, objectified and institutional
Contrary to popular belief:
girls and boys score about the same in national math tests
Rosenthal and Jacobson's 1968 study of the Pygmalion effect provided strong evidence that teacher expectations matter. Which of the following actions by a teacher would NOT promote student achievement?
giving less-difficult material to learners they see as "especially promising"
Affirmative action practices refer to policies that:
grant preferential treatment to subgroups within a population
The embodied cultural capital that parents have may work with institutional cultural capital. Which of the following illustrates this?
if a parent has confidence in social settings, he or she may be better able to advocate for others in front of the school board or at parent-teacher meetings
Which of the following is NOT a sociological criticism of the idea that IQ affects educational outcomes?
if there is a relationship between innate intelligence and educational performance, then there is no need to look at social factors
With regard to race and high school graduation rates, which of the following is correct?
in 2007, about 18 percent of blacks age 25 and older had graduated from high school, as compared to about about 86 percent of whites in the same age range
With regard to race and college degree completion, which of the following is correct?
in 2010, about 20 percent of blacks age 25 and older had graduated from college, as opposed to about 30 percent of whites in the same range
Which of the following is an argument in favor of school vouchers?
in order for schooling to be equal for all children, parents should be able to decide where their children go, regardless of their ability to pay
Which of the following statements is true with regard to preferential admissions to colleges and universities?
in the last 15 years, admissions preference for athletes has risen steadily, surpassing that of m minority students
According to functionalist theories of education, which of the following would NOT be a function of the American education system?
indoctrination into anarchist ideology
The research on teacher quality demonstrates that:
it is difficult to identify characteristics tat will make effective teachers because these characteristics are hard to quantify
Which of the following is a functionalist explanation for the increased number of Americans with college degrees throughout the course of the twentieth century?
jobs have become more skilled and technologically advanced, and a more educated workforce is necessary to fill these jobs
Research has shown that the ____________ the family, the ____________ the children's achievement on test scores and grades.
large; lower
Which of the following scenarios does NOT illustrate the resource dilution hypothesis?
misha, nisje, and Trisha are triplets. their educational outcomes will be stronger than those of single-born children because they can learn from one another
Bill Cosby is concerned with black underachievement in the American school system. He suggests that:
more African American parents actually parent
When studies control for family background characteristics, the SAT:
no longer predicts college grades very well
Which of the following trends in current educational achievement is NOT supported by research evidence?
only girls whose parents are college-educated achieve as much as boys
One of the problems with credentialism is that more and more students (with their parents' help) are attempting to attend private schools or to be placed in the best tracks in their public school. This may be one of the reasons that:
parents are attempting to have their children accepted at the "right" day care, sometimes even before they are born
As more people obtain college degrees and it becomes unreasonable for students to stay in school for most of their young adulthood, what is one consequence?
people will seek to differentiate themselves not only by having a degree but also by earning degrees from the most selective and prestigious colleges and universities
Stereotype threat is a:
psychological process of fear that develops when members off a negatively stereotyped group are placed in a situation in which they may confirm the stereotype
Which of the following is NOT an element of socioeconomic status?
racial background
The SAT was developed in order to provide children from public schools with a chance to demonstrate their fitness for college and to show they are as able as students from private high schools. It is therefore ironic that:
researchers now question how meritocratic the SAT is, because the SAT may test knowledge that is biased against certain groups
A prominent hypothesis about the effect of family size on children's educational outcomes is the ____________ model.
resource dilution
Which of the following is NOT an argument that would be made by a conflict theorist?
schools are the one place where all children despite their family background, can move up in the world
What is the relationship between birth weight and education?
siblings who weighed less at birth exhibit lower educational attainment than their header siblings
Cultural capital refers to:
social class-based skills and resources that people inherit and can use to their advantage
With regard to biological or genetic differences between people, sociologists have found that:
stigmatized minorities in all countries have lower IQ scores, lower educational attainment, and lower occupational status, indicating that social processes of stratification and stigmatization affect the life chances of these groups.
Which of the following is NOT an argument in support of the sorting function served by schools?
students are sorted in ways that reproduce existing social inequalities
Suzanne and Jessica are best friends. Both have been in the same classes throughout elementary school and have performed similarly with respect to grades. Suzanne's dad owns his own company and her mom is a lawyer. Jessica's dad is a plumber and her mom works at Wal-Mart. All other things being equal, which is a true statement?
suzanne is more likely than Jessica to stay in school longer, score higher on cognitive tests, and be placed in college preparatory classes in high school
Which of the following is NOT an argument in support of tracking in schools?
systems of tracking socialize students to the inequalities they will encounter in American society
Boys are more likely to engage in risky behaviors and experience problems at school; boys are also more likely to ____________ than girls.
take math and science AP classes and score higher
Which of the following is NOT an argument against tracking in schools?
teaching benefits students in the upper and lower tracks but does not provide benefits to students who are in a genera; track in between vocational and college-bound students
One of the major reasons that lower-status parents use more directives and teach their children to be more obedient than inquisitive is that they:
tend to have jobs that require them yo be obedient and they want their children to learn this
Which of the following statements is FALSE?
the Burakumin of Japan have a history of discrimination but have educational achievements similar to non-Buraku Japanese
Which of the following is NOT mentioned in your text as a criticism of using the SAT as a college admissions criterion?
the SAT does not predict college success well for older students who have been of high school for some time; admission criteria need to be adjusted for adult students
Which of the following examples would NOT be supported by the research findings on the influence of home characteristics on education?
the activities of summer camps, community programs, and home environments are not important factors in the academic achievements of higher social class children who are performing well during the school year
Social capital is:
the collection of relationships that can facilitate the actions and behaviors of others
What was the nature of the scandal surrounding the SAT Reasoning Test in the spring of 2006?
the college board admitted there was a scoring error that tended to incorrectly underestimate the scores on more than 4,000 tests
What might be a reason that upper-status students score higher on SATs?
their parents are better to obtain help for them, as in SAT prep courses and extra tutoring if they are doing poorly in school
Which of the following is a factor affecting the strong academic performance of Asian Americans?
there is a high degree of social capital in Asian American communities, and the community reinforced norms regarding education and parenting
One of the major reasons Native Americans were placed in boarding schools for 60 years was:
to socialize them to become "civilized" Americans
When classrooms are divided into ability levels, type of preparation, or according to future plans, it is called:
tracking
With regard to the effects of families on children's educational outcomes, which of the following is true?
when a family goes from two to three children, middle children are significantly more affected by the loss of family resources
With regard to research on the effects of race and social class on education outcomes, which of the following is true?
when social class characteristics are controlled for, test score gaps between black and white students shrink, black students have a higher high school graduation rate, and black students are less likely to be held back a grade