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Essay on Divorce and its Implications on American Society
American society may have erased the stigma that once accompanied divorce, but it can no longer ignore its massive effects. As social scientists track successive generations of American children whose parents have ended their marriages, the data are leading even some of the once-staunchest supporters of divorce to conclude that divorce is hurting American society and devastating the lives of children. Its effects are obvious in family life, educational attainment, job stability, income potential, physical and emotional health, drug use, and crime.
Landmark study known as the Coleman Report (Coleman, 1966) studied the academic performance of over 645,000 students (1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th and 12th grade) in more than 4300 schools nationwide. The study drew an unexpected conclusion as summarized by Block (1993): The students' family background is the most influential factor in school achievement. School facilities, curriculum, and teacher characteristics have a comparatively minor influence on student achievement, with teacher characteristics being the strongest of these three.
In a reanalysis of data from the Coleman Report and a national longitudinal study involving over 100 high schools and many smaller studies, Jencks (1973) concludes: School achievement depends largely on a single input, that is, the family characteristics of the students, and all other variables are either secondary or irrelevant. Further analyses of the Coleman data and additional large-scale studies (Mayeske, 1966; Mosteller & Moynihan, 1972; Averch, 1972) determined the family background to account for 70% of student performance (Ornstein & Levine, 1989, p433).
Compelling evidence for the above conclusion has also been presented in Hanushek's (1986) exhaustive review of literature concerning school input (teacher characteristics, curriculum, facilities, etc.) Vs student output (student achievement). The results of Hanushek's review of 147 studies as stated by Deller, 1993: ...These studies are "startlingly consistent" in finding no strong empirical evidence that traditional school inputs have the expected positive influence on student performance.....
