Parental networks, social closure, and mathematics learning: A test of Coleman's social capital explanation of school effects

Through an analysis of gains in mathematics achievement between the tenth a nd twelfth grades for respondents to the National Education Longitudinal St udy of 1988, we examine Coleman's explanation for why Catholic schools appa rently produce more learning than public schools. According to Coleman, Cat holic schools benefit from endowments of social capital, generated in part through greater intergenerational social closure (i.e., dense network conne ctions between the parents of students). Instead, we find that for public s chools, social closure among parents is negatively associated with achievem ent gains in mathematics, net of friendship density among students. This ev idence of a negative effect of parental social closure within the public sc hool sector lends support to our alternative hypothesis that horizon-expand ing schools foster more learning than do norm-enforcing schools. Moreover, this result renders social closure incapable of explaining any portion of t he Catholic school effect on learning, even though within the Catholic scho ol sector there is some evidence that social closure is positively associat ed with learning.