Fathers' characteristics and their children's scores on college entrance exams: a comparison of intact and divorced families

Adolescence, Fall, 1998 by L. Allen Furr

Researchers, educators, and the general public have long been interested in the educational well-being of children whose parents divorce. For the most part, when children are exposed to parental divorce, their academic achievement suffers. Compared with children from intact families, children who have ever lived in a mother-only family complete fewer years of schooling, are less likely to receive high school diplomas, fall behind their age cohorts in high school, and are less likely to enter college (Graham, Beller, & Hernandez, 1994). These disadvantages do not affect all groups equally. The educational liabilities of living in a single-parent family are more pronounced for boys (Hill & Duncan, 1987; Krein & Beller, 1988) and for ethnic minorities (Grimes & Register, 1991; Pearson, 1993). The longer children live in a single-parent household, the more injurious are the effects (Krein & Beller, 1988).

In looking for factors that may mitigate the consequences of divorce, researchers have investigated the relationship between children and their noncustodial fathers. It was assumed that the more fathers participated in their children's lives, the better off the children would be. Studies have not completely supported this assumption, however. Using objective factors such as visitation rates and compliance with child support orders to measure fathers' post-divorce involvement with their children, researchers have reported mixed results for nonresident fathers' impact on education. King (1994) has indicated that father visitation has no beneficial effects for children's well-being in general and educational performance in particular. On the other hand, the payment of child support to custodial mothers has been found to have a positive effect on educational performance and, by raising the mothers' income, offsets a considerable amount of the educational disadvantages incurred by living in a mother-only family (Beller & Graham, 1993). Child support income has been linked with higher reading and math abilities, as measured by standardized tests, and with higher perceived scholastic competence (King, 1994). In addition, positive relationships have been found between child support compliance and the amount of schooling achieved, high school completion, and college entrance (Beller & Graham, 1993). Further, income from child support has been shown to have more positive effects on educational attainment than does income from other sources, such as welfare and maternal earnings (Knox & Bane, 1994).

What has not been tested is the impact of fathers' behavior on their children's performance on college entrance examinations (CEEs), which are important gatekeeping mechanisms for college admission. How adolescents perform on these examinations can have dramatic consequences for their life course by defining the range of educational opportunities that are likely to be available to them.

College Entrance Exams

The two standardized college entrance exams used most in the United States are the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the American College Test (ACT). These tests, both of which are intended to predict future academic achievement, differ somewhat in design. The SAT attempts to measure verbal and mathematical skills, whereas the ACT is broader, examining an array of academic topics in addition to math and language. Scores from CEEs are an important part of a student's application to college, particularly for highly selective schools.

CEEs are treated differently in the American educational system than in other countries. In the U.S., CEEs typically do not determine if a student advances to an institution of higher learning, as is the case in Europe and Japan. Rather, these tests influence what kind of college students will attend (e.g., elite private, less selective private, large land-grant state, specialized state, regional state, or open-admissions community college). A low CEE score may disqualify students from attending an elite private university, but it does not prevent them from pursuing further education after high school altogether. In many other countries, college entrance exams stratify students more formally and track them on very different life courses: students are either eligible for a university education, and subsequently better jobs, or they are not.

Thus, in the United States, the relationship between CEE scores, going to college, and a good job is less exact than in Europe and Japan. Nevertheless, a postcollege stratification effect remains for occupational outcomes. Monk-Turner (1983) found that occupations are tiered according to the type of college attended. When controlling for ability, socioeconomic background, college goals, and years of education, the type of college students first enter is related to eventual occupational status and income. In other words, the ranking of students' occupational outcomes corresponds closely to the ranking of the admissions standards of the schools they attended.

CEEs are purported to provide an objective measure of students' analytical ability. However, questions about the efficacy and validity of these measures as predictors of future academic success have been raised. Perhaps the most salient criticism of CEEs concerns the fairness of the tests for measuring the academic ability of students from disadvantaged social groups. Many of these charges have, in fact, been supported by empirical research. For example, Pearson (1993) has argued that the Scholastic Aptitude Test is an inadequate instrument for testing the abilities of Cuban Americans, who generally score lower than European Americans. Cuban Americans do not perform as well, according to Pearson, because the SAT uses English words that are unfamiliar to this largely bilingual group. Thus, it is widely assumed that two general social factors are responsible for disadvantaged groups repeatedly scoring lower on CEEs: (1) educational resources are inadequate and (2) the exams are riddled with cultural and topical biases that favor middle-class European Americans.