Juan Battle

Term Paper Title	Juan Battle
# of Words	661
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.64

Juan Battle

Battle, J. Juan, (Jul.1998).  What beats having two parents?: Educational outcomes for African American students in single- versus dual-parent families.  Journal of Black Students, vol. 28, issue 6, p. 783-801.

Description:  Juan Battle compared single parent homes to dual parent homes, while studying the academic progress of both.  The data used in this study was taken from the National Longitudinal study of 1988, the National Opinion Research Center and the National Center for Education Statistics, which undertook the design and conducted the base study.  The study had two stages.  The first stage consisted of 815 public schools and 237 private schools.  The second stage had 26,435 randomly selected students among the sampled schools, in which only 24,599 students participated in the survey.  This sample is representative of all the nation's three million eighth graders in 1988.
     The research of the study compared African American single parent families to the African American dual parent families.  The study determined if the family had a role in children's academics or not.  The research looked closely at the socioeconomics status of the family.  They correlated the families' education and income level to the child's academic success.  They found that lower socioeconomic African American students in single-parent families score significantly higher on the standardized test measure.  Where at higher socioeconomic status, African American students in dual-parent families, outperform their counterparts in single-parent families.  So it appears that the non-traditional family structure poses a negative influence on a students performance and behavior.

Reaction And Assessment: The article posed a real problem in America.  It is a real life issue, and it has affected each and every one of us at one time or the other.  The study was conducted very well and is very well put.  I do question the validity of some certain things.  I feel that i...

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